Music Review: .snd – Atavism

When given limited resources, it’s amazing what artists can produce. With a graphite pencil and a blank sheet of white paper, an entire world can be created. These tools can be used for everything from a simple sketch to the blueprints for a billion dollar, 100 storey building. While many artists would use a pencil and a piece of paper to design the original idea and then flesh it out with color and texture, a true artist could be content with these simple tools.

The same could be said of music, and that’s exactly what .snd, a project by a Mark Fell and Matt Steel, have done with Atavism. Even their names reflect the minimal sound palette they employ. Focusing almost entirely on rhythm, the “clicks and clacks” are almost at the limit of electronic minimalism. Yet when a snare or synth enters, .snd show exactly what can be done with so little.

Atavism is the duo’s first album for German experimental electronic label Raster-Noton, a label that is synonymous with the limits of minimalism. The fact that it’s .snd’s first album in seven years seems to count for nought, as Atavism picks up exactly where their third album, Tender Love, left off.

Although IDM is the genre .snd would most often be labelled with, their music is worlds apart from that of musicians such as Aphex Twin. Refusing to fall into typical glitch sounds and rhythms, here Fell and Steel craft 16 untitled tracks, some almost being stand alone tracks, while others act as bridges between ideas.

The first handful of tracks (and it would be wrong to distinguish tracks as the album needs to be heard as a whole) seem surprisingly warm. The middle third of the album almost collapses into nothing but clicks. But right at the point where many listeners may get bored/annoyed with the repetition and lack of development, the exact synth tone from track 2 suddenly reappears, making the listener aware exactly how warm the record can be. The last third of the album could almost be considered “typical” IDM, with even a couple of tracks (track 12 for example) you could almost imagine being played in a forward-thinking club.

Though I would recommend Kanding Ray’s Automne Fold as a beginning point for people new to the Raster-Noton label, for those familiar to this strain of minimalism, Atavism approaches the pinnacle of the sound pushed by the label, perhaps even eclipsing that of co-label head Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto.

It’s a shame that minimalistic electronic music tends to be labelled as “cold” and “clinical”, even by the style’s biggest fans, as .snd has proved here how warm and full of personality it can be. While it’s true the middle third of the record lapses into the clinical precision so feared by many producers, .snd manages to pull it off. The fact that it’s bookended by such brilliant warmth makes the record all the better for it. It’s amazing what can be done with a graphite pencil and white paper.

4.5/5

Note: An edited version of this review first appeared on JunkMedia.org