MAS14.04CD, LP

After releasing three EP's under his own name over the past several years on his own Musik aus Strom imprint, Michael Fakesch, the taller half of Funkstorung, has released his first full-length. And what a refreshing change of pace this album is: washes of ambient guitar, mellow folk-style vocals, and blistering 909 kickdrums. Entirely kidding, there.

For those of you who already own the aformentioned three EP's, you'll recognize several tracks: "I:Omac", "Rand VA", "Surfaise", "From Crocut", "Diesehle", and a re-worked "Rand VC" all make appearances here. This is all excellent material-- intriguing anti-percussive flairs and meandering basslines and inorganic melodies, all somehow congealing into one unified blend of an anachronistically organic and dirty whole. That said, a great deal of this recording is very uptempo and, as such, doesn't sound much like Autechre, a feat of which Fakesch has often been accused.

The handful of new tracks, meanwhile, stray into more "purely rythmical" territory. The opener, "Demon-Stration", is a bit of distorted hip hop tweakery that in some ways recalls the Funkstorung remix of DJ Craze that appeared in Additional Productions. "Jazdrive", on the other hand, is less about the titular gigabyte of data than it is a wall of interference and backpedaling synced with a kit of jazz snare drums. Really unusual stuff, this track, and a lot unlike any prior Funkstorung work. The two new concluding tracks, "Sega" and "1Biet", mix the proverbial Autechre synth-tones with aggressive, distorted quasi-tech-step drum patterns, finishing up with some squelchy distorted hip-hop mimicry.