aaamusic | On 22, May 2011

Hailing from Germany and citing influences from Daft Punk to Stevie Wonder and back again, Filterwolf’s ADNAN DURIC is not simply content to churn out his surreal, atmospheric techno, but to push the envelope of sound into new territory. ‘Night Patterns’ continues this quest with a bewildering yet not unappealing sense of adventure.

On many levels, ‘Color Of Spring’ should make me want to throw my laptop out the window. Those awful female non-verbal backing vocals so often abused in house music are all over the place, but alongside this, Filterwolf has decided to stitch together a simple dance beat and set of loops with a sunny flamenco-style acoustic guitar riff, as well as a hallucinogenic – possibly brass instrument – tune that really makes something of all the electronics and samples.

‘Deep Data’ sounds like the mad lovechild of the Tetris theme, a Russian folk orchestra, and a sweaty club warehouse in the seedy underbelly of London, without even a whisper of 8-bit. Instead, even the synths feel highly evolved, a pulsing bass beat pumping blood around a melody that would be glitched out if it weren’t so sleek and agile in its addictive sound. Trippy vocals inject a whole new level with echoes of Asia in the otherwise European flavour of the track, and the result you can’t help but bounce to. This sense of crossed cultures and undercurrent of gleeful menace carries over to the mischievous ‘Klezmer’s Revenge’, the rave cousin of Jewish fiddle music. Tipping the borders of the comical and the cunning, this cut of sonic alchemy is something else entirely. Ditto with ‘Parlami D’Amore’: is it a vaguely Middle Eastern pop track? Is it a manic rave a la Daft Punk? I’m not sure, but the rich vocals and traditional percussion sounds offset the party-time synth wails with startling appeal.

The first English-language words are on the mesmeric ‘Never Ever’, a droning voice that comes at the listener as if submerged. The track itself is a heavily computerised techno beast, but with Filterwolf’s subversive fingerprints all over it: while eminently danceable, isn’t your bog standard, holding a hint of the uncanny valley as a faintly perceptible oddness lurks somewhere just outside the realms of the explainable. This hits its most bleakly seductive in ‘Babel’, where the deep beats grind out with a sneering sexuality despite the almost childish use of simple Casio synths, and the male/female vocals played over the pulsing groove feels disturbingly passionate and steamy for an electro track.

Initially bright, the energy of ‘Night Patterns’ follows a curve in mood until it hits a dark mystique in ‘Ghost Ghetto’, the eerie, glacial result of Orientalist percussive influence and the grand Teutonic tradition of creating something icily beautiful. Think Neu brooding over a cup of chai, surrounded by opulent Persian design and hailstones clattering at the window. However, this contemplative break can’t last forever, and ‘What Time Is Love’ brings back a jaunty mood, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek sense of bitterness, as the overly cheerful electro squalls and saw-toothed sounds are given direction by a crystalline soul voice sample asking the title lyric. The cascading instrumental section in the middle is an inspired piece of charm as well, without losing the feel of the track as a single piece.

Finally, ‘Glass Beads Game’ starts to wrap things up by bring us back to the earlier playful yet cold tones of earlier, an indescribably wooden tinkling like a crystal marimba driving its hedonistic yet spectral melody. And ‘Burana Channel’ almost devolves the complexity of the whole kaboodle, as a real dance heart moves the clicking glitch synth, but then we are swept up by a cinematic group chant that twists the atmosphere one last demented time.

It is all too easy to lose oneself in lauding Filterwolf as some kind of mad musical luminary, a Frankenstein of the dancefloor as he stitches together, well, pretty much everything. But I’m sure you’re tired of my doing so. In closing, ‘Night Patterns’. Listen to it. It really is that good.

Author: Katie H-Halinski