Octogen, the pseudonym of Scotsman Marco Bernardi, has released his awaited debut album "2five0nine," an incursion into the microhouse music genre that is bound to make ears smile. The album showcases his confident blending of wee little bite-sized drum samples into delectable textures. Compared to his EP releases, Octogen manages to inject surprising amounts of emotion into the usually stark "drill-and-bass" backdrop.
His efforts to give a soul to a genre defined by its technology obsession will not go unnoticed. Taking a friendly synth sound and coating it with reverb is nothing new, but the warmth found around and within his music will make many change their expectations about the genre.
Octogen sounds effortlessly soulful yet keeps the "that's cheesy" reaction down to a minimum by showing a great deal of restraint when mixing the tracks together. In a January EQ Magazine interview he explained that "the album is not a club album," and that he was "going to be holding the curb back."
Essentially, Octogen wanted to keep the tracks as clean and simple as his drum samples. The danger is that consistently holding the intensity back in any form of music risks losing the listener's interest. He does manage, though, to keep his pieces fairly intricate, mixing parts that are in constant evolution.
While these esthetics present an updated approach, there are infrequent moments where the minimalism of "2five0nine" is tiresome. However, this makes Octogen's tracks ideal for the sets of club DJ's and mixing enthusiasts. Though powerful when played alone, Octogen provides the perfect driving beats to slide under rich ambient sounds from classics such as The Orb or Brian Eno.
This is not to say that "2five0nine" is simply DJ food or that is has not been fully completed. One finds better-than-decent standalone tracks on the album that release the perfect amount of tension. "Scionide" is club-ready, yet leaves plenty of room for further experimentation. It features a nice drill bass line underneath an oh-so-catchy synth counterpoint. The song is a perfect example of Bernardi's jittery, frantic style, yet it is much more tonally rich than his previous releases.
The album edit of "Ligrgirl" wraps the listener's head with wooly, ambient breaks cut up with a warm and minimal rhythm section. Aside from those, some new experimentation with chopped-up vocals and processed nature sounds lends more variety and substance to the piece. Though these attempts at "semi-music effects" are ubiquitous in electronic music, Octogen finds a fresh and subtle interpretation of the old tricks.
Another track that stands out is "Acieob," an edgy nod to the Detroit house genre that manages to sound groovy and warm while keeping the individual sounds edgy and less organic than conventional house. One of the more fully developed tracks, "Soulsearcher," features the filter bass line commonly found in the French house community and uses the blatantly synth-generated sounds from early electronic music. One of the less dazzling qualities about the song is a repetitive rhythmic chime phrase that makes it hard not to think of the TV news music from the '90s. Since the effect is paired with such great "filter funk," it seems more like future news channels where the anchors have white jumpsuits and jetpacks.
The album is not without faults. The unabashed simplicity of several of the synth sounds becomes abrasive when Octogen's composing loses its intrigue. "Save Your Saviour" loses feel points because of its repetitive and unadorned rave shout-out synth that simply doesn't fit with the song's otherwise sophisticated temperament.
The other downside to the album is that it strives to be inorganic and succeeds to the point where after extended listening, one's ear craves something acoustic.
These faults are minimal (no pun intended) and mostly a result from having such a pure and uncompromising product.
A listener who wouldn't instantly recognize Octogen's sounds as nouveau-Detroit shouldn't give up, for his music appeals to lovers of many different subgenres within house music.
However, for those whom electronic music doesn't appeal, "2five0nine'"s barebones approach may offend the ears. House enthusiasts, though, will find this album essential for their collection.
