Macro head Stefan Goldmann joins the Soundcloud community. Dive into his freshly created profile by clicking here to find a preview of one the cuts featured on his new “Adem EP”, “Rigid Chain (Dub Mix)”.
 
Some bits and bobs about Goldmann’s “Adem EP” via Textura:
 
“Macro’s brainiac techno is always welcome in these parts, and its latest, a three-tracker by Stefan Goldmann is no exception. He brings the same kind of audacious sensibility to the EP’s material as he did to his 2009 take on Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which was stitched together from 146 sections lifted from over a dozen recordings. But let’s be clear: Adem has little connection to Western classical music. It’s techno, if techno of the wacky Macro kind”.
 
STEFAN GOLDMANN rigid chain (dub mix) // MACRO M28 by Stefan Goldmann

Stefan Goldmann didn’t establish himself as a force in electronic music by doing things the standard way: his own productions and those found on his Macro label rarely sound like they’re coming from the same universe as practically everything else on the shelves. That’s certainly the case on the Adem EP, Goldmann’s and Macro’s latest: neither his weirdest nor heaviest record, it’s nonetheless the kind of ticklish release that can tie a DJ set into the best sort of musical knots.
 
“Adem” takes its melody from chalga, a sort of winding Bulgarian folk/pop/dance style, and it provides Goldmann with just the sort of closely placed notes and resulting sweet dissonances he likes. (A melody-isolating “Chalgapella” heads off the B-side.) The beats, however—wiry, precision-cut daggers of drums—are Goldmann’s own. Tech house fans have heard plenty of Eastern European sounds woven into these sorts of rhythms over the years, but “Adem” doesn’t feel like a cut-and-paste job: each serves to amplify the bounce of the other. “Rigid Chain (Dub Mix)” goes quite a way with just bass, a few drum samples, quiet pads and a hyperactive delay unit. “Shallow Grave” settles into a kind of grim post-industrial space, a bit of a weird landing pad for an EP that begins with such bounce. But Stefan Goldmann rarely plays to any expectations other than, well, just that.
 
Tracklist: Stefan Goldmann – Adem EP
A Adem
B1 Chalgapella
B2 Rigid Chain (Dub Mix)
B3 Shallow Grave
 
Review via RA.

Macro’s brainiac techno is always welcome in these parts, and its latest, a three-tracker by Stefan Goldmann is no exception. He brings the same kind of audacious sensibility to the EP’s material as he did to his 2009 take on Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which was stitched together from 146 sections lifted from over a dozen recordings. But let’s be clear: Adem has little connection to Western classical music. It’s techno, if techno of the wacky Macro kind.
 
The EP’s prime cut, “Adem,” twists synths into funky shape by warping a single pitch until its insistent thrum breathes Arabian fire—an arresting sound all by itself but one Goldmann amplifies by pairing it with a skipping rhythm that huffs’n'puffs like some Western-styled hoedown (harmonica-styled wheeze is also audible during the track’s closing seconds). Skeletal by comparison, the B-side’s “Rigid Chain” strips things back to little more than a pumping, off-beat bass line and a slithering hi-hat-and-bass drum combination. The twelve-inch vinyl EP concludes with “Chalgapella,” which isn’t a third original but a five-minute version of “Adem” with the rhythm elements omitted. The A-side’s eight minutes are so head-spinning, however, that the other tracks can’t help but seem secondary by comparison.
 
Via Textura.

Stefan Goldmann Adem EP finally brings a new concept of handling melodies to the world of House and Techno. Pushy synths tuned to Arabian intervals, playfully pitch bent around one repeated note that sticks to the kick as if it’s life depends on it. It’s as if a parallel universe’s Acid has been invented in some lunatic asylum in Tirana. This primitive melody is as alienatingly synthetic as it is offensively brain-dissolving. In the hands of a DJ, Adem is like the Captagon formula in the hands of the Bulgarian secret service: many deaths, big bucks. Chalga, Tallava, Manele – call it anything. The B-side’s Rigid Chain is as detuned, yet strictly limited to a rogue off-beat bassline pumping in between metallic house drums. That’s it.
 
Release date: May 2012
 
Pre-order your copy now via:
 

Panorama Bar, Sunday morning. Andre Galluzzi plays the last hour of his set and the floor is properly crowded. Andre flips feverishly through his CD wallet while the BPM meter shows 119. The tracks he pumps out aren’t produced differently from those you used to hear two years ago on 128 BPM. It’s just that the pitch control is set to minus 8 – a DJ’s creative decision. Now the music feels totally different. The elegantly euphoric swing of deep house’s classic tempo zone between 123 and 128 made way to a heavy, dragging grind. Limbs seem to rather float freely than move along actively to the beat. Any excessive movement of an arm would look like the out-of-synch crowd expressions at an indie rock concert here. Long gone are the times when Kevin Saunderson spoke: “130 BPM and people dance the whole night.” Well, the night has been over for quite long, too.
 
Even slight changes in tempo strongly affect the impacts and perceptions of musical elements. Certain quantizations, rhythmic microstructures, sound differently when just a few BPM faster or slower. The bass seems to shift, too: from solid to pushy, from heavy to hectic. A light offset from binary towards triplet rhythms, produced by turning a wheel named “shuffle” on the drum machine sequencer, evokes associations with Chicago house. Turning the wheel up to the max produced a style associated with Cologne (the city where Kompakt is based, not the other stuff).
 
Different tempo zones address different possibilities to express and engage with them. Different people and different social groups are drawn to (or driven off) the dancefloor by them. Sometimes it’s a loose common experience by individualistic hedonists, sometimes what looks like a marching formation of people in uniforms – BPM-fields of identity. May that be a reason for the predominantly teenage or male audiences found in styles ranging from dubstep to hardcore techno? Will you see women dancing only below 130 BPM? That’s probably a cultural phenomenon. At hectic bass parties in Detroit for instance one can witness quite remarkable female dance moves, too. In a European setting theoretically things turn around again once beats push past 160 BPM. When I was 16 and visitied the Metalheadz Sessions at London’s Blue Note, black girls in athletic gear simply danced incredibly liquid moves in half time – i.e. they synched to a groove at 85 BPM (instead of the 170 the DJ was spinning).
 
Playing around with rhythmic patterns is like looking through a kaleidoscope, which assembles a new cultural concept every time it is turned around. Whole genres in the fashion of “footwork” can be created by accidentaly pushing the tempo controller somewhere unintended. Miniscule interventions at the right time and at the right place are often sufficient to quickly build a devoted crowd meeting for a dance in some basement, week after week. No one needs to fear boredom, that is. And hardly anyone has touched on all the asymmetric metres as yet. Endless possibilities.
 
As I found out recently, the duration of exposure to a rhythm has its own special meaning too. When recently after a frenetically greeted live set KiNK decided to engage in 15 minutes of experiments with layered loops drifting apart, someone started screaming “stop! stooooop!”. Everyone looked with amusement at the angry girl. She probably felt betrayed, the spell of potential eternity that was built up by the looped 4/4 kick drum, being broken. Do not disturb my circles.
 
Stefan Goldmann Berghain column – March 2012 (German version also available).