home > browse > cd-feature > view article

CD Feature/ Detritus: "Thresholds"

  Tobias

Drum n Bass isn’t dead, but it has turned into an underground operation. One half of its guerillas have signed on to the job of revitalising the genre’s strength by taking it back to its roots. The other weilds the digital scalpel, dissecting even the tiniest rhythmical fragment, fissioning its atoms into microscopic units. If this is the matrix, then David Dando-Moore isn’t part of it. “Thresholds” follows in the heals of his second full-length “Origin”, a collection of haunting, half-lit nocturnes, but the fragile heart at the bottom of that album has been broken. The label calls this a “point of rupture” – we call it an earthquake.

To understand why this seemingly inconspicious four track ep has the potential to twist a few heads, it is interesting to note, that Dando-Moore was part of a metal-based project before and that until recently, Detritus-related interviews mentioned the name of Richard Wagner next to discussions of the Keyboards used for production. To this man, breakbeats were not a means for their own sake, but the open vein of his bleeding work, the vessel his vision of bizarre beauty sailed on. Melodies relied on more than two tones and a lot of effects and harmonies were not just ornamentation. In fact, in the dreamy haze of its parallel world, the galactic grooves almost canceled each other out and the electronic ambient surface underneath revealed itself as an emotional, organic landscape.Only a few months have passed since those days, but “Threshold”, the result of a “tough part” in David’s life, seems almost lightyears away. The beats are sharper, the sounds more edgy, the moods more grim and threatening - this is the sound of the city at night, a drill instruction for the drugged insomniacs marching towards the dawn. Just as with previous Detritus releases, you can listen to the music on your comfortable chair, but really this music demands to be taken out to the streets, to the clubs, to those endless parties in subterranean tunnel labyrinths. The majestic themes and elegantly hymnic motives are still there, but this time they twiste and totate around their axes like whipping tops, fusing into hypnotic and catchy loops. Each track is made up of various segments, which take turns in instigating, edging closer and closer to a frenzy with each cycle. This time, strings and choral passages are not part of the piece’s texture, but catalysts of sweat.

Less can be more and it certainly is on this occasion – “Thresholds” may only run for a mere twenty minutes, but its relentless breath will force you to return to the beginning right away. Even though it is neither part of the digital breakbeat scene, nor the revivalist movement, a lot of its energy reminds one of the early days of drum n bass, when everything seemed possible and the maniacal loops rose from the ashes of dub and hip hop for the first time. The fight for the future has definitely begun: Life outside of thr matrix may be hard at first – but in the end it’s the real thing.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Detritus
Homepage: Ad Noiseam Records