DeFocus (Review)

Clan Analogue are an Australia-wide do-it-yourself, underground, collective of more than 100 electronic sound composers, DJs, visual artists, designers, videomakers and the like who are committed to using anologue sound equipment such as 808s and mellotrons. They were formed in Sydney in 1992 at the Evil Brotherhood of Mutants (EBOT) warehouse in Cleveland Street, and were associated with the legendary Vibe Tribe outdoor dance party events at Sydney Park which were brutally invaded and closed down by police. One of Clan Analogue’s earliest events was a celebration of the birthday of synthesiser inventor Robert Moog, who remains one of their mentors. Regional branches exist in Canberra, Melbourne and Perth, with sporadic members based in Byron Bay, Wollongong and elsewhere. Clan-associated artists who have achieved recognition in both Australia and Europe include Atone, Sub Bass Snarl, the Telemetry Orchestra, the Futile Sound of Brunswick, Zog, and two of the few female electronica and techno artists in Australia, B(if)teck and DJ Zeitgeist. Clan Analogue are committed to pursuing a non-commercial, non-mainstream approach to their music, and the Sydney collective runs Electrplastique, a weekly program on 2SER radio devoted to all-Australian electronica. They also ran electronic events at the Sydney Big Day Out in the mid to late 1990s as well as being involved in the Freaky Loops dance parties and the Newcastle Sound Summits. They release their artists’ music on their own label, in conjunction with Creative Vibes.

DeFocus is the most recent showcase of Clan Analogue artists’ work, and its subtitle ‘Low Res’, apart from suggesting the rock musician at the centre of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Idoru, derives from the low resolution electronic production that predominates on this compilation. As Clan Analogue’s website states, it ‘steers a path through ambient dub, minimalist techno, electro noise and lo fi’. Throughout the sixteen tracks, ‘anti-production, accidental noise, low bit-rate recordings and analogue tape dropouts make sporadic appearances’ challenging listeners to ‘question their received notions of electronic production’. The ‘error messages’ of the cut-click-glitch mode of electronica pioneered by the more ear-bleeding approach of the Viennese label Mego predominates here, although often in the more melodic, listener-friendly versions of the sub-genre popularised by British artists such as Pole and Four Tet. But it is often hard to distinguish these tracks from standard techno fare. Monotonously repetitive beats tend to predominate, ranging from the standard thud-thud-thud-thud techno brutalism of Fluffy T Bunny to the slowed-down brutalist drum and bass of Alex Davies, the rubber band pulse of Terry Nation and the more melodic ambient dub of Deep Child’s ‘Refugee Dub’, which does little to justify its title. Clan founder Kazumichi Grime offers a more melodic, but darkly ambient pulse on the Terry Riley-like ‘Monomental’, Pretty Boy Crossover mix static, electronic buzz, echo and vocal samples on  ‘Switch’, CSB VS. Windup Toys combine music box-like chimes and electronic bleeps and swooshes with a insidously insistent, reverberating bassline, while it is a relief when beats drop out altogether on the final two tracks, Able Child’s electronically modulated lion roars and the funereal keyboard loops of Zog’s “April DX’.  An acquitred taste no doubt, and not especially challenging in relation to other recent electronic music production of the Ninja Tunes variety, but at least this is refreshingly non-commercial, local, do-it-yourself fare.