Portable: Version
~scape

On his ~scape debut, Portable (Alan Abrahams) tampers little with the riveting African-house fusion heard on 2003's Cycling (Background Records) but that's neither a criticism nor a complaint, given how incredible Version's nine tracks sound. Born and raised in South Africa and a London resident since 1997, Alan Abrahams again captivatingly merges traditional African rhythms and instruments with house and techno. It's not necessarily Portable's masterful weaving of instruments and layers that's innovative (as other artists do the same in similarly deft manner) but his exotic sound palette. Abrahams digitally merges minuscule electronic particles with samples of traditional, even ancient, African sounds, resulting in tracks that sound current and timeless. That latter quality derives in large part from his sample sources, specifically field recordings made at various locations throughout the vast African continent and compiled over many decades. In less talented hands, the musical results might be no better than a vulgar 'world music' pastiche; Abrahams, by contrast, alchemizes the material into a deeply original and fresh re-invention of techno and house.

Portable's songs are mesmerizing marvels of construction. While a lonely guitar riff opens “Ebb and Flow” evocatively, the spotlight gradually shifts to hollow croaking sounds and increasingly dense patterns of shakers and drums; most memorably, a wooden flute call initially lurking in the background moves to the forefront, warbling loudly like a distressed bird. Though electronic splatter jumpstarts “Down Stream,” the track quickly segues into streaming house pulsations overlaid by incessant thrums of percussion and phantom voices. Hypnotic swirls of voice samples, smears, and panning textures induce vertigo in “Temporal Distortion” while the voice fragments that pepper bumping rhythms in “Tempura” suggest Kraftwerk as much as Africa. In the album's most impressive outing, the ruminative mood initially dominating “Typhoon” is swept away by a bewitching storm of voices, clangs, horns, and rippling streams. Put simply, Portable's music constitutes a near-perfect mind-body fusion; one can just as easily appreciate the masterful layering and textural richness of “Notions of Slow and Fast are Set at Naught” as surrender to its hypnotically potent polyrhythms, a claim that easily extends to Version as a whole.

June 2005