Alex Smoke makes electronic music that runs counter to virtually every prevailing trend. More interestingly, there are very few moments during the last decade-plus that this statement wouldn't be mostly true. The Scottish producer crafts dark, ornate music that seems intentionally at odds with electronic music's current fixation on luminescent house sounds; he has a reputation for minimalism, but his productions seem too roiling to slot into whatever sounds that word represents. Dubstep is similarly deep and ominous, but Smoke sounds steely and focused, not foggy and stoned. On his third album, Lux, he again uses tough arpeggios, mumbled vocals, and furrowed percussion to enact mini-dramas of industrial techno.
Though Lux can evoke comforting sadness, its orchestral bent and general meticulousness keep it from ever feeling truly despairing. So the album offers these small perversions of mood without becoming overbearing. Because he obscures his voice and has a reputation for making complete albums (as opposed to singles), Smoke's work has been compared to Thom Yorke's solo outing, The Eraser. While both share an affinity for the hardscrabble rhythms of mid-1990s IDM, Smoke's compositions are less linear and song-oriented. The 14 tracks on Lux often stretch past six minutes, but Smoke doesn't build to climaxes so much as sniff out every corner of his creations.
Lux is Smoke's least motive album yet-- only the most generous definitions of "dance" would include this music-- but these tracks don't idle, they prowl. When Smoke increases the tempos-- the thrumming "Blingkered", the lite-rave of "Pilk"-- his songs sound tense, not celebratory. You can connect the lurching "Physic" or "Lux+" to Hyperdub's smeared sound attacks, but minus the exposed-nerve bass. Lux occasionally sounds like Coil's snake-y masterpiece, Love's Secret Domain, but that album alluded to sex and drugs (or maybe druggy sex), and Alex Smoke seems chiefly concerned with Alex Smoke.
More than anything, Lux feels self-contained: produced by a single artist and released on Smoke's own Hum + Haw imprint, it projects dark vistas that feel deeply personal. Unlike many techno artists, Smoke builds his albums for sitdown sessions (EPs containing floor-friendly versions of "Lux+" and "Blingkered" are already available) and has seemingly little concern for where these dense, thoughtful behemoths fit in a broader context. Forunately, Lux needs little besides an accommodating, stormy mindset for its hum and shiver to make sense.
