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Lorenzo Senni, "Quantum Jelly"
This is a simple, yet effective deconstruction of electronic dance music. With Senni's love of house and techno music clearly on display, he strips the clichés of the genre down to their barest essentials, showcasing an intentionally repetitive series of almost fragmented tracks. While at times the repetition can become a bit too tedious, overall the results are quite unique.
The album is made up of real time live recordings via MIDI with no overdubbing after the fact, using only a single synthesizer as the instrumentation.Interestingly, Senni sticks to the more melodic, rather than the rhythmic building blocks of dance music, which are usually the focus of the genre.There is nary a 909 kick drum to be heard, and a standard beat only appears on two of the five tracks, albeit heavily buried amidst the synths.
Instead, the focus is on tight synth arpeggio leads: the traditional build-up component for most tracks, isolated and repeated without ever reaching the expected climax.The descending pulses of "Xmonsterx" stick with an occasionally numbing amount of repetition, but eventually the key range becomes spread out further, and the pacing is slowly tweaked and modified into something noticeably different."Windows of Vunerability" follows a similar tact, but adds in a simple, snappy rhythm to pair with the melody.There is a slight, but perceptional variation on the beat until its conclusion, where things get all stuttering and inconsistent.
Lorenzo Senni mixes it up a little more on "Makebelieve" and "Digital ‚àû Tzunami." The former emphasizes rhythm more than melody, with chaotic, but structured loops that possess a digitally ragged, eight bit quality to them at times.On "Digital Tzunami," Senni matches a squeaky synth sequence with a buried lower-end thump, offsetting the higher pitched sounds quite nicely.
There are definitely times where the intensive, intentional repetition of Quantum Jelly begins to get a little much, especially on the 13 minute "Xmonsterx."At these times the balance between conceptual and enjoyable starts to shift in the wrong direction for my tastes.However, the shorter, more diverse pieces on the second side of the record go a long way in keeping things fresh, isolating and freezing in time the moments of electronic music we all know, but never consider solely on their own.
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