Portable - Version
Tracklisting:
1 Ebb And Flow (5:32)
2 Notions Of Slow And Fast Are Set At Naught (3:56)
3 All Eject (4:27)
4 Down Stream (6:23)
5 Thought In Action (4:09)
6 Temporal Distortion (6:27)
7 Tempura (5:41)
8 Typhoon (6:47)
9 The Opened Book (4:37)
http://www.discogs.com/release/476504Back in the Golden Age of the early nineties, when it was still possible to associate Techno with grand theoretical blueprints of a new society, a DJ once claimed: „We need all these machines to, at long last, revert to being archaic.” And this axiom rests on an old, yet still valid truth: Techno is at its best when it is simultaneously archaic and totally futuristic. Like the music of Alan Abrahams, born and raised in Capetown/South Africa, now a resident of London and, as his alter ego Portable, an avid explorer of the fringes of Techno and House.
Portable’s futuristic elements are tucked away in the music’s overall structure, in its form, so to say, and a superficial listen will reveal close parallels to the hyper modern splinter funk of the likes of Sutekh and his Context label where Portable also released his first record. In his music miniscule, spikeless particles are strung together, pop up and disappear within the tiniest fraction of a second, but never pander to the genre of micro-sampling Techno. The archaic aspect of his sound, on the other hand, becomes most apparent in its content, in the unique sound sources Abrahams has unearthed for his own “Version”. Portable tracks reassemble fragments of ancient African polyrhythms and syncopes which have surrounded the South African for years.
„Version“, Portable’s second full-length album, is based on field recordings that offer blurred glimpses of the jungle or a crackling campfire. For these snippets, recorded sometime during the sixties, seventies or eighties and at various locations spread over the vast African continent, someone somewhere once beat their drum, as had been done for generations past, and someone else held a microphone. Abrahams has taken these ur-beats, preserved for posterity, and used modern audio software to digitally rework and filter them, thus lending them new shine, but preserving their old heritage, their lore. Like genetic material Abrahams has imbued even the tiniest slivers of this album with both futuristic and archaic elements.
The resulting sound is far from the “world music techno” some may have feared. Instead, Abraham’s “Version” represents a truly unfettered variant of techno that elegantly and serenely circumnavigates any prevalent beats, sub-scenes and trends. Often enough Abrahams allows syncopated bass drums, like dancehall riddims, to mess with the static matrix of conventional 4/4 signatures and adds a polyrhythmic flow to the proceedings, a humane sensitivity beyond the obvious and often superficial spirituality of Deep House. Nevertheless, “Version”, too, is deep, soft, round and organic. And Portable’s “Version” also highlights an often forgotten chapter of Techno’s heritage: its African roots, a true afrofuturism, which no one pursues and represents as well as Alan Abrahams from Capetown/South Africa.
Incidentally, most of these tracks were created on the road, at or after Portable live shows in Canada, Japan or Europe. Here ‘portable’ refers to Alan’s home, often no more than the soft glow of a laptop in the twilight of a hotel room, somewhere in this world.
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