There’s nothing stripped-back about minimalist electronic label FLUF’s output over the last few months. This new one from NYZ is the Swedish label’s ninth digital EP release since the end of September, and a recent interview on Loose Lips with label head tuuun – Irish producer Steve McEvoy – had a footnote that FLUF had already released two EPs since their chat.
Amid the daily deluge of convoluted press releases from labels, bands and festival promoters, FLUF’s emails are a palate-cleanser – usually one line about the release, in Courier typewriter font. This latest one is “from that purveyor of finely-crafted synthesis NYZ, also known as artist/scientist David Burraston. It’s sharp in all the right places”.
Burraston, aka Noyzelab, Dave Noyze and Bryen Telko, is an award-winning Australian sonic theorist and synth artist who’s been working in tech exploration and electronic music since the 1970s, but this latest release has more in common with Dopplereffekt’s high-concept particle physics voyages than the analogue romanticism of Jean-Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream. Burraston is also the man behind the insanely detailed Syrobnkers! interview conducted over several months with Richard D James around the release of Aphex Twin’s Syro album in 2014.
As with all other FLUF releases, it’s a double A with a sequential number rather than an actual title, and AA0009 also shares with its predecessors a clinical disregard for electronic music trends. Track one, 0009A hangs on a panning slithery synth rasp that shape-shifts and fizzes over its five minutes. To kinda paraphrase The Orb, it feels like a huge ever growing pulsating insectoid brain that rules from the centre of the ultraworld — when all the humans are finished.
Track 2, 0009AA, is a droning, hypnotic tractor beam of hive mind interference that will either knock you out like a white noise lullaby, or give you an arm-scratching fear. You won’t be dancing to it anyway.
Moo Kid 