HECQ: BAD KARMA
HECQ
BAD KARMA
HYMEN
Hecq’s third album is the kind of record one assumes there hundreds of. Scanning the catalogue of Hymen records throws up lots of equally obscure names like L’Ombre, Lusine ICL, Snog and Beefcake, artists unknown outside of the tiny gene-pool of Post-Techno Electronica, who one imagines make records just like Hecq’s. That’s to say sleek and eldritch by default, programmed with terrifying attention to detail on the latest kit and un-preoccupied with their own consequence. However, I wonder if any of these other people’s records are quite as satisfying as “Bad Karma”?
Hecq, aka Benny Boysen, has a superb grasp of rhythm. He manipulates glitch’s hiccoughs and tics into fine-fibered black steel webs occasionally co-opting sampled drum and bass patterns, tom toms and tablas into his filigrees. It’s refreshing to hear electronica not destined for the dance floor, traditionally myopic, white-bred and stuffy, seizing upon rhythm’s visceral power and inherent melodic qualities (the drums here are exquisitely tuned). Equally it’s not surprising that other commentators have found the record unnecessarily arid in much the same way folk used to complain all James Brown’s records sounded the same.
Tracks like “(Untitled)” a dark froth of softly rolling congas and aleatory shifts in timbre are seductively blank-eyed, perfectly embodying 808 State’s old adage “Flow Coma”. “Scumdrum” another highlight uses a Darbuka drum and nimbly weaves its characteristic hard Middle-Eastern sound through a minefield of galloping hip-hop breaks. Also excellent is the half-paralysed clunk-skank of “Into the Unseen”. All of these rhythmic palettes have been cryogenically frozen in same sonic cold storage, strafed with Hecq’s signature lift-shaft Doppler effects, their ambience sounding like dry-ice looks.