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Personable, "Spontaneous Generation"
Ged Gengras has been a somewhat ubiquitous and integral figure in the LA music scene for the last several years, contributing his varied talents to artists as disparate as LA Vampires, Pocahaunted, and Sun Araw.  However, I did not know that he had a solo "modular techno" project and had I known, I probably would not have been terribly inclined to seek it out.  Consequently, I was completely blindsided by the massive and wonderful 20-minute opening song on this, his debut full-length.  The other two songs do not quite reach the same heights, but it does not matter much, as "Spontaneous Generation" is almost enough of a must-hear instant classic to carry the whole album.
On paper, Spontaneous Generation almost seems like a perfect storm of things that make me sigh wearily, combining retro synth fetishism, elitist genre revivalism, and song-less vamping.  However, much like the old cliche "it's the singer, not the song" suggests, the wielder of the modular synthesizers in this case manages to transform seemingly unpromising material into something quite compelling.  At least once, anyway, as the title piece turns a burbling synth bass sequence and a thumping drum machine in a dense, unstoppable juggernaut that sounds like a surly Tangerine Dream trying to level a dance club.  Or perhaps Detroit Techno, Acid,  or Chicago House re-envisioned by an especially hook-savvy noise artist (or preternaturally talented mental patient).  I mean all of that in the best possible way, of course, as minimalism has rarely sounded this muscular, wild, vibrant, and obsessive.  Gengras proves himself to be an absolute wizard at exploiting the infinite possibilities of relentless repetition, endlessly shifting the emphasis of the beat, modulating the bass line, and erupting into noisy and visceral flare-ups.  It is, quite simply, a tour de force.
Unsurprisingly, Ged is not quite able to recapture that magic with the two pieces on the second side of the album, despite adhering to what is essentially the same template (thumping beat + constantly morphing synth hook).  They both offer moments of inspiration though.  "Billions of Christic Atoms" starts quite promisingly with a flurry of wild bleeps, bloops, and squelches, but lacks the urgency and snowballing power of its predecessor.  The closing "Series of Energies," for its part, is endearingly loopy and chaotic, but its comparatively plodding central riff prevents it from building up enough momentum to catch fire.  The problem with working within such rigid self-constraints is that a one-riff vamp that extends for 10 or 20 minutes is going to live or die based upon the strength of that one riff.  Gengras always does a fine job tweaking his content into something vibrant and ingeniously mutating, but "Spontaneous Generation" is the only piece where he conjured up a bass pattern killer enough to hold it all together.
Of course, it is pretty damn impressive that Gengras did manage to find a hook hypnotic enough to ride for 20 gloriously weird and inhuman minutes.  Perhaps he will be able to do it again, perhaps not.  Either way, he has made me a believer in this quixotic project, as I never suspected that something so narrow and self-consciously retro could be so mesmerizing and intense.
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