Myklo: Cisco Project
Persistencebit

Shaduz: Tkanina
Persistencebit

There's next to no background info on Myklo (Camillo Cammarota) at the Persistencebit or Myklo sites so the four tracks on his Cisco Project 12-inch will have to tell the story. Side A finds him mirroring the droning buzz of high-wire electricity and smeary bass wipes in the mid-tempo pumper “The Life Line” before following it, oddly enough, with an even more insistent and smeary remix. A simmering broil percolates throughout “Cisco Soul,” the expected rise in temperature never occurring, but the tightly-coiled electro machinery of “Nervous Area” takes care of all that. Judging from the spacey ambiance on display here, Cammarota's got electrical atmosphere as much on his mind as pure beatmaking.

Tkanina (texture), the debut EP by Shaduz (Vincenzo Pacella), also features four cuts, each suitably multi-patterned one here referring to a specific texture: cotton, silk, spandex, and cachemire. So massive it could topple buildings, Shaduz's cavernous bass becomes the disc's common denominator when it rumbles through all four songs. The tech-house opener “Cachemire” is bubbly and nimble-footed while “Spandex” is twitchier with glitchy tendrils branching out like octopus arms. On the B-side, a sputtering melody echoes and dances through “Cotton” and minimal melodies rise up from the bass murk and open their eyes to the morning sun in the bumping “Silk.” In general, Shaduz underscores textbook minimalism with a steamrolling base.

May 2006