SND | Tender Love
Mille Plateaux | CD
SND's calculated grooves are a firm favourite among their followers and 'Tender Love', their third release for Mille Plateaux, is sure to enhance their already solid reputation. Their now-trademark pops and clicks hover above melodic grooves which, once locked in, are played out with metronomic precision.
Mining software's outer confines to tease new sounds from the fabric of their machinery Matt Steel and Mark Fell adroitly nudge their sequencers into gently infectious patterns. Track 1.0 (all tracks are untitled) opens with multi-layered funk - Version 7.0, Revision C of Detroit's trademark minimalism circa 1988. Pause. Track 2.0 more of the same, but different.
Like the early Detroit innovators (Juan Atkins in particular) and their Sheffield counterparts (early Warp, specifically Sweet Exorcist's 'CC EP') SND isolate the soul in the machinery they utlise. Warm, simple rhythms interlock, creating clean digital patterns which build layer on layer until, by Track 4.0, they've evolved into a five minute oasis of intricately fractured beats.
Track 9.0 bounces a rhythm around the stereo plane before incrementally introducing a perfect p, pa, pat, patt, patte, patter, pattern before abruptly shifting gear and segueing with Track 10.0. Every track built with the same painstaking attention to detail. Every track intelligent and considered. Every album perfect.
[CM]
