ARA KOUFAX
Sweet Pitch (https://arakoufax.bandcamp.com/album/sweet-pitch)
Melbourne’s Ara Koufax return with what you could reasonably describe as a sampler pack for the electronica-novice. Or a calling card for the already-that-way-inclined who haven’t come across the work of Sam Gill and Luke Neher before*.
There’s a slowly burbling minimalist wash, with woody percussion and what might be Afro voices, in Morning Sickness that blends into the escalation of HBGary where squiggles, a disembodied female voice and upward moving synth chords are pushed along by what might at another time be a classic Rick Smith pulsing mover.
Though in the middle of the EP these two tracks serve as a kind of night-starter, the double you’d want as you head out of the door late one evening with empty pockets and full head.
The actual starter for the EP is Private Prism, a mix-n-match blend of phased, indistinct voices and swelling chords that offers an opaque entry, intriguing in its refusal to settle exactly where this set might go.
One place it does go is some factory space via Drums Unlimited. Now Drums Unlimited has a title like a Chemical Brothers song for a Noel Gallagher collaboration, but it spins out from a squelch-and-bubble sound-off into a trancey zone and offers a pushing, front-of-discussion bass as a constant for an otherwise plain but vibrating soundscape.
The most likely track to fill that factory space though is the out-and-out banger, pg13, which thrills my Underworld-loving heart (and can be heard on this playlist ) with its already-two-hours-into-the-high propulsion, yet another blurred female voice and the sense that when it ends at 4.04 it’s only because someone has switched channels on you. More!
Speaking of which, six tracks in a lighting fast 26 minutes invites both hopes for some future remixes (I’d be up for a Black Cab remix of HBGary) and a reminder that when All That Is Solid Melts Into PR finishes Sweet Pitch the Euro-trance atmosphere has actually primed you for a night.
Which is very alright with me.
*If you’re going back, as I did, with Ara Koufax (not, it seems a descendent of a famous baseball pitcher) can I recommend Proper Holy from their 2015 self-titled EP?
