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- Date Released: October 25, 2005
- Genre: Electronic
- Label: Kompakt
This 2005 solo debut is about as perfect as minimal house gets.
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We Say...
Matias Aguayo's 2008 song "Minimal" may make fun of the eponymous genre — "Cause that music got no groove, got no balls, no me hace pumpin' pumpin' pumpin'" — but that doesn't mean that maximalism is the only option left. In truth, the 2005 solo debut from the Chilean/German musician, a former member of Closer Musik, is about as perfect as minimal house gets. Produced with Markus Rossknecht, the album's nine tracks construct deadly effective grooves out of little more than unvarnished drum machines and squelchy, bass-heavy analog synthesizers. While their beats hew to the Teutonic precision of house and techno, their lurch and languid pace both owe almost as much to hip-hop's minimalist origins. (Not coincidentally, Aguayo and Rossknecht also use MPCs, the hip-hop instrument of choice.) And while he'd never be mistaken for a rapper, Aguayo also puts his voice front and center here, ranging from gravelly lows to a wispy falsetto. He's no traditional vocalist, though: the pair have sampled and spliced Aguayo's grunts and whoops, fitting it into the rhythmic matrix as just another percussive sound, one even more immediate than the overdriven oscillations of their keyboards. Anyone looking for "un ritmo más nocturno, más profundo, más sensual" will certainly find it with Are You Really Lost?.
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They Say...
Closer Musik's unexpected split had a heartbreaking effect. Dirk Leyers and Matias Aguayo left only one album, a couple singles, and three consecutive show-stealing appearances on the Total compilations. They were Kompakt's Pet Shop Boys, or Associates, a male duo with a distinct sound. One of the things that made Closer Musik so dazzling -- and perhaps, ultimately, so combustible -- was the tension between the two producers' disparate idiosyncrasies, made clear when Leyers unveiled his first solo 12" in early 2005. "Wellen"'s bulbous, trance-inducing melodies and gentle coating of synthetic atmospherics were in line with CM's "Departures" and "Maria," so it could've been deduced that the relatively rigid, stripped-down shapes within "Closer Dancer" and "You Don't Know Me" were the work of Aguayo. That theory holds with Are You Really Lost, an album Aguayo produced with assistance from Marcus Rossknecht. "De Papel," the only track that comes close to resembling a song or a single in the traditional sense, starts it off by indicating Aguayo's desire to separate himself from his past while retaining his identity. It has the dark undercurrents of old, as well as the sparse and alluring skeletal sound -- a sashaying gallop in this case -- but there's an added muskiness, and Aguayo's voice sounds more human while intoning lyrics that are either completely nonsensical and/or enunciated as if he has lost the feeling in his lips. He always has and probably always will sound like he's trying to get in your pants, but he's no longer so mysterious (despite the gibberish). The rest of the tracks are more like moods or sketches, in each case settling into a motif and more or less relying on it for four to six minutes. They're not all that dynamic, but they're often seductive and misshapen, ideal for an impossibly humid room of dancers who are too overheated to do anything but grind. On "Drums and Feathers" and "Are You Really Lost," Aguayo's vocals are reduced to primal grunts and sexual gasps that respectively zip from left to right and hit like jabs. On "New Life," he returns to the prowling gigolo heard in "Closer Dancer" and "Ride," dropping come-ons ("Tell me I'm cold/I don't care/'Cause I know that you're hot/Yes, you're hot") that would only be effective for their deliveries, while on "Well," he's out for the same exact thing but assumes a more naïve role. As for the lesser moments, there's "The Green & the Red," an awkward children's song (in which Red, who sounds like a cyborg Cartman, comes in at the end to pledge affection for Green), and then there's "So in Love," a lightly pumping track involving a chant of the days of the week and a repeated declaration from someone who sounds like an obscene phone caller. Are You Really Lost is polarizing as much as anything else, but nearly anyone who comes into contact with it should be able to agree that it's one of the strangest albums Kompakt has released.
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| 01. |  |
De Papel |
5:01 |
|
| 02. | |
Radiotaxi |
6:14 |
|
| 03. | |
Drums & Feathers |
5:36 |
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| 04. | |
Well |
5:27 |
|
| 05. | |
New Life |
5:57 |
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| 06. | |
The Green & The Red |
4:24 |
|
| 07. | |
Are You Really Lost |
5:37 |
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| 08. | |
So In Love |
6:14 |
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| 09. | |
De Papel Feat. Max Turner |
5:00 |
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09 Total Tracks, 49:30 Total Length
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Credits
- Matias Aguayo - Producer // Sarah Szczesny - Artwork // Marcus "Roccness" Rossknecht - Producer
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