Monday, June 20, 2022

They Come In Twos - Alonzo (Cultivated Electronics)


 

Title: They Come In Twos 

Artist: Alonzo

Label: Cultivated Electronics

Cat Number: CE042

Genre: Electro


A1: Animal Control

A2: Cause & Effect

B1: They Come In Twos

B2: Magnetic

C1: Corner Of 11th

C2: Drunken Badger

D1: Unprofessional

D2: Zone D


Having first come across Alonzo via his ‘I’m A . . . ‘ release on WT, and then ‘003’ on Zement, I harboured more anticipation than is strictly normal for someone of my advanced years when discovering this release in my inbox. I’m not disappointed either, with my predilection for grungy, world out of balance beats being more than satisfied three tracks in. Vocoders feature heavily as well, and who cares if the lyrics can’t be made out. It’s all about the menace and threat, yeah? Mind you, nothing works independently. Those sinister spoken word emissions would be nothing without the multiple textures of electro that lift them to new, disorientating heights. There’s a healthy feeling of unease and disturbance aligned to an insatiable machine funk momentum that keeps this collection ticking over like a finely tuned instrument of chaos. Alonzo does like a flange, and this is used throughout the album, but nowhere more devastatingly than when it is combined with a screaming siren on ‘Drunken Badger’. The title track is notable for its coalescence of practically all of dissonant electro’s already mentioned hallmarks, and the collection is bookended by a couple of tunes that also employ oral dissonance sparingly, and multiple cluster bomb effects liberally across their respective synth infused landscapes. On the one hand there’s nothing strikingly new here, but the collection comes together beautifully as a sequential piece of work with momentum sustained. I just wish the tracks were each a little longer to maximise mixing potential.

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