Rich Sudney: Ionosonde (Ionosonde Recordings, 2014)

March 1, 2014 at 7:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Rich Sudney: Ionosonde

Dubby techno from a prolific Detroit netlabel artist who previously used the name Telegraphy. Clicky, crunchy beats and dubby echoing chords and bass, as well as watery, filtered vocals. The 3 “Phone Talk” interludes show a dark, biting sense of humor completely unique to certain corners of Detroit techno (think DBX, Dopplereffekt and friends), with the narrator calling up someone named Eggie Kishnoshky who tells him that the apocalypse is already here and that everything is a conspiracy and that you should start watching everything through your third eye. Also, the two continually refer to each other as “mon”. “An Enigma Inside A Riddle” begins with the repeating dial tones from the end of the first phone talk interlude, and by the end of the track, it’s morphed from ambient dub techno into a straightforward dub reggae riddim. “Everything Is Under Controlled” and “Dancing With Your Shadow” are entirely instrumental, with the former having some light guitar notes, and the latter having some more rapid, clicky, crunchy beats. “Phone Talk 3” ends grimly with explosions and the narrator being silenced while the operator asks if anyone’s there, and “Get A SSTV Decoder Dummy” is a creepy ambient collage using samples from the phone interludes. “Ocean (Telegraphy Reconstruct)” ends the album with an appropriately aquatic remix of “An Ocean Inside A Bottle”, bringing this oceanic-yet-fully-Detroit album to a close. Available on Bandcamp.

Leave a Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

The Answer Is In The Beat