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For a brief time in the 1990’s the New York based label Instinct Records was source of some of ambient techno's most magical and enduring music. NY resident Taylor Deupree’s role in this story was a significant one. Both his music and the wonderful CD cover designs he did for himself and others were as important to Instinct's aesthetic as was Kim Cascone’s helmsmanship at Silent Records, a kind of sister label which rode the same ambient techno/trance wave over in San Francisco. Deupree recorded solo and collaboratively under a number of different pseudonyms during these years. His three solo albums as Human Mesh Dance are the ones that most strongly embody the spirit of post-rave 90’s ambient. The HMD sound is clean and precise but softened by ravishing melodies and haunting chord progressions. It’s machine music with grace, a gently psychedelic sound that simultaneously relaxes the body and stimulates the mind. Of the three HMD albums his debut Hyaline bears the most obvious debt to club music, being surprisingly uptempo in places with beats upward of 140bpm. This becomes numbingly repetitive on at least one track - drum programming from this era sounds tinny enough as it is - but on several others the kick-drum remains light and allows the composer a degree of subtlety. Best of these is “Transient” on which a soaring, mysterious, slow-motion synth line floats above the percussive maelstrom to stunning effect. Offsetting the album's more intense moments are some breathtakingly beautiful slowbeat numbers like “Sunflower”, a taste of what would come to full fruition on the next album. Mindflower is a true ambient techno classic, full of space and imbued with that curious mid-90’s cosmic glow. The fantastically layered melodies are formed from a combination of crystalline textures and soft, soaring synths comparable to the best music of similar acts of the era like Kim Cascone’s Heavenly Music Corporation. The track titles are tantalising and highly visual: “Wet Moon”, “Skyflower” “Nerve Crystal”. The pace varies from smooth robot funk to the beatless rhaphsodies of the album’s last quarter. Mindflower is an album full of wide-eyed-wonder, a product of its time but genuinely timeless. The last HMD album was the beguiling Secret Number Twelve, the debut release on Deupree’s own 12K Records. In hindsight it’s atypical of the much less accessible and avant-garde output that 12k would become known for. It retains some of the pretty and ethereal qualities of Mindflower even though it is darker and more ambiguous than its predecessors. An alien atmosphere is especially palpable on “In Pools” with its eerie arpeggio and hovering, swooping synths. Deupree’s move away from psychedelic ambient in the late 90’s was part of a wider trend across the ambient techno scenes in the USA, UK and Europe. Today the psy flame is more likely to be carried by artists who identify with underground trance, progressive house and the more exotic strains of dub. Meanwhile “ambient techno” has become colder and harsher with digital glitches, clicks and deconstructions ruling supreme. Fine if that’s you bag, rather sad if it's not. Instinct Records meanwhile has long abandoned the sound in favour of nu jazz, dub and more mainstream fare. |
