The Answer Is In The Beat

Sensate Focus megapost

September 1, 2013 at 8:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

When Mark Fell started releasing new material on Raster-Noton, Editions Mego and a few other labels a few years ago, both as part of SND and under his own name, I tried wrapping my head around it and I just wasn’t getting into it. It just sort of sounded like it was continually butting its head against a wall and didn’t really go anywhere. But gradually, especially since he started releasing material as Sensate Focus last year, it just began to make more and more sense to me. The Sentielle Objectif Actualité album in particular was something I had on repeat for a long time (especially at the gym, oddly enough) and it made me seek out as many of his recent works as both Mark Fell and Sensate Focus as I could. I missed out on the first Sensate Focus 12″ but I have all the others. The first 3 12″s were actually remixed into the Sentielle LP, so it covers similar terrain, some of the same sounds and textures, but they’re still pretty different. Not sure I can say which versions are more accessible, they all seem to follow precise yet oblong rhythms, sort of heading towards 4/4 rhythms but with the corners bent a little. The versions on the Sensate Focus 12″s utilize more vocal samples that suggest house, and some calm atmospheric synths, but the rhythms are still fractured a bit, yet mostly at consistent paces. Hard to tell which of these tracks is the biggest hit, but side X of Sensate Focus 2.5 has a little bit more of a future-pop sensibility to it. Sensate Focus 2 is a collaboration with Mark Fell’s SND bandmate Mat Steel, and seems to blossom a bit more melodically than the previous 12″s. And the latest release in the series, Sensate Focus 1.6, is a collaboration with Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay), and pushes into more complex beat patterns as well as more epic builds. Side Y in particular is a total mind-melter.

Most of the Sensate Focus 12″s are on their own sub-label of eMego, but the project’s most full-length statement is the Déviation Heat-Treated LP on Pan, which remixes Heatsick’s lo-fi Casio house into a throbbing, jittery, buzzing epic. The Casio tones aren’t really as evident here, but there are some snatches of voices, and some very finely chopped garage-house synths. As staccato and knotty as the beats and samples are, they’re paced at such even patterns and sometimes combined with airy synths, so it actually gets pretty easy to follow, at least definitely compared to the stuff Mark Fell was releasing 4 years ago. I’ve heard Sensate Focus refer to as “tidy house”, and while it might confuse a lot of people a lot of people who have a pretty clear definition of what house is, there definitely isn’t anything messy about it.