The threshold wasn't well defined, but at some point, after years of shopping at Boston's Twisted Village Records, I inevitably felt drawn to take advantage of the record store's extremely unorthodox and potentially self-destructive perk: a cart-blanche listening station. The only true try-before-buy I know of, short of supermarket samples and certain types of prostitution, any album can be cracked open and held suspect to the stylus; everyone, it seems, has struggled through the Merzbox for at least a couple hours.
This feature finds itself particularly useful in the case of those countless, expensive electronic imports that continually elude the P2Ps. My criterion for the day was admittedly simple-minded: I was perfectly beat-happy, and the debut innards of Montreal-based Egg's digipak, Don't Postpone Joy, had to be, too. The disc, beyond the onus of introducing artists Julien Roy and Guillaume Coutu-Dumont, also inaugurates Mutek Records, which plans to issue a compilation of its successful Montreal experimental electronic festival namesake and a wealth of similar-minded local Montreal talent.
Much of Don't Postpone Joy is largely upbeat, falling squarely in the crib of minimal electronic's archetypal, failsafe slickness. The record most consistently recalls the darker, respoked big beats and glitchy quirk of Mouse on Mars' Idiology and the crisp, wiry sampling (and geography) of Akufen's My Way-- although in forgoing a reliance on hooks for almost suffocating builds of cut-ups and added instrumental lines, this duo seems to aspire less to the dancefloor than to some intensified abstraction of its sweat.
"Alternative Biology", "La Corde" and "Continuous Drizzle" constitute the album's dark, delicately composed opening sequence. There's more rhythm present in these tracks than in the more abstract material of Eggs' contemporaries in Mouse on Mars, as shots of synth are fired into vast, open chambers, and vocal cut-ups echo and pan across the Bucaphelan bounce. An unobtrusive bassline and sputters of high- and low-frequency glitch settle into the mix, which for its nervous turbulence, lacks any discernible build or motivation. "La Corde", on the other hand, flat-out smokes. Coupling a big bass/tiny click movement with deft string section cut-ups, Egg stuffs the track with quick shouts of "Party!" and vinyl, locked groove-style violin skips. The groove's heart of darkness is loosened only once, when a fleeting string sample sounds the track's lone major chord. "Continuous Drizzle", with its endless barrage of vocal cut-ups and fittingly splattered treble drops, is simply stormy Akufen-- which is both a compliment and criticism.
Clearly, the duo take root in a storied electronic tradition, and their ability to make sweeping stylistic shifts is commendable, but at times, their similarities to predecessors and forbearers are too overwhelming: the spritely "Clara", while enjoyable, also rips its pages from Akufen's book; "Ramp" sports effects eerily similar to Wolfgang Voigt's 12-inches; the brief "Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport" is a quirky sampling ditty that comes off too much like a middle-aged Max Tundra. Beyond these regurgitations, however, Egg offer two wonderfully inventive tracks:
The first, the downtempo "Kabuki Express", borrows the tapered horn blasts of Mouse on Mars and shrouds itself in a verdant mist and spooky flute and synth melodies. The samples react to one another with a dynamic akin to jazz rhythm sections, inhabiting a peculiar consciousness that expresses itself through the samples' call-and-response mimicry and self-incarnation. The second, "Rouge de Base", most clearly showcases Egg's potential ability to busy a track with an inordinately varied number of samples while maintaining legitimate and perspirant movement. What's unusual about this track is that, despite its complete lack of a hook, it remains undeniably a song in the most traditional sense, its tearful bassline bearing all the marks of a tech-house break-up anthem like Luomo's "Tessio".
Between these two numbers, it's clear that Egg have something new to add to a micro-house genre growing exponentially as artists, labels, and debuts of both crop up before us. As an inaugural release for Mutek, Don't Postpone Joy also promises the possibility of a new electro-label epicenter: a Montreal Kompakt or Basic Channel certainly couldn't be a bad thing.
