:: Record Review

Ellen Allien

Boogybytes Vol. 4
(Bpitch Control; 2008)

Rating: 77%

The Boogybytes remix series distills techno to a distinctly German formula somewhere more permanent than its usual hopscotch notion of eclectics and minimalism. Ellen Allien’s installation, her most direct contribution to the series since giving it a home on her Bptich Control label, is both a succinct summation of its appeal and a more rewarding, streamlined listen than her last official full length, 2005’s cracked Thrills, and her 2007 Fabric 34 comp. Allien’s albums’ best moments are joyous revisits of German techno’s most staid indulgences; Vol. 4 maintains her coda while eschewing the assumption of artistic license to simply drop what’s hot with bullet lethality.

Like last year’s dance standout and CMG favorite, Pantha du Prince’s This Bliss, Vol. 4 looks less to crescendos than it does to subtleties and textures. Andres Zacco & Lucas Mari’s “Carbonela (Seph’s Vindrionela RMX)” chime atonal bells into cavernous voids of space—a technique re-examined with solemnity later on when Allien references Melchior Production’s “Don Juan,” and monosyllabic calls and echoes submit a single high over ultra-repetitive bottom-end. Seeley’s “Juicy Vermin” then takes initial lines and stretches them to marathon-length; empty spaces and the sensuous luxury of time make dance-as-contemplation seem more likely than dance-as-transcendence, or even dance-as-show-off-the-size-of-your-record-collection. The mix is the stuff of mass transit modernity—broad movements belying precise machinations—to find efficiency in clarity of purpose. Allien may grace the cover, but her mixing is an egoless, knowing captaincy.

First Ricardo Villalobos & Patrick Ense’s “Fizpatrick” (Villalobos conveniently being one of the few other DJs I put in a class with Allien) and then Konpiuta’s “Christmas Fairytale (Moessap Edit)” into Sozadams’ “Eyes Forlon” are especially prescient of the listener’s pull against the swell of this textural tide pool. Each track finds itself subsequent to the mix’s gratifying aesthetic, an available democracy of sound, but highlights still manage to point, terse and laser-like, at the ceiling. Fellow Boogybyte alumni Sascha Funke and Gaiser’s “Withdrawal” are late-game comers with synths and buttery hats. Dynamics and tempo are, at this point, distant cousins to variation in strict lines; it’s no wonder it was the Germans who invented De Stijl. It seems there are fewer cultures better at tweaking the same tools to boggling, miniscule variations in place of the big swaths of dumb gesture.

The mix is ended beautifully, with the largest (which isn’t to say large) seismic shift to be felt here: the semi-ambient, beat-less “Twice,” which shimmers like a distant natural phenomenon. The entire mix has the feel of close quarters, intense detail, and precise, microscopic focus, until “Twice” opens to panoramic impersonality. The move is expert, confident but careful slippage by Allien, letting us know, teasingly, that this mix is as good as it is not because she knows what to include, but because she knows not to include much.

Allien is navigating the back alleys of her scene with all the expertise of a better-celebrated genre warrior or punk rock casualty, and while jettisoning her personality for purity’s sake to boot. Vol. 4‘s best moment’s coalesce with all the cohesion of a painting. To listen is to watch Allien craft with the vibrancy and steady hand of the practiced artist. As consistent an artist as one can hope for these days, Allien’s Vol. 4 is yet another quality entry in what is becoming an incredible discography.