Graded on a Curve: Emptyset, Borders

Spawned from the enduring Bristol, UK scene, electronic duo Emptyset specialize in a process-based techno-descended minimalism. Earlier releases offered an anxious hypnotic throb as one component in an intriguing, somewhat science-fictive sonic milieu, but on their latest release the focus is again tightened, with cyclical harshness abundant; a continued adherence to rules amid constant growth strengthens the record’s concise running-time. Borders is out January 27 on virgin vinyl featuring an artworked inner sleeve and on compact disc tucked into a 4-panel mini-LP style gatefold package via Thrill Jockey of Chicago.

James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas are Emptyset, their partnership beginning in Bristol in 2005, though Ginzburg is now based in Berlin and Purgas in London. These individual moves are ultimately no matter, as their new album once again offers the type of stern yet enticing experimental sort-of-techno for which the city of Bristol is noted. Their 2009 self-titled full-length debut, originally on Caravan Recordings and reissued in 2015 on Ginzburg’s Subtext label, displayed contents underlining the duo’s interest in reliably harsh minimalist techniques over celebratory body movers or songlike motifs.

The above observation isn’t a rigid truth; as Emptyset progresses it utilizes synthetic bass tones frequently employed by club bangers and Dade County car stereos as the disc’s mid-section track “Completely Gone” could easily fit into a DJ set, albeit an edgy one. However, what surrounded it was clearly in the ambient-experimental zone, a fertile tradition that extended to 2011’s Demiurge.

A constant facet in Ginzburg and Purgas’ collaboration is a refusal to remain operationally static. They’ve engaged with performance, the moving image, installation work, and a persistent attention to physical spaces, with the pair exploring the possibilities of sound creation in specific structures on a pair of releases taking them even farther from the techno realm and into industrial territory; “Medium” was recorded in Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire, UK, while “Material” employed the Ambika P3 in London, the Chislehurst Mine in Kent, and the Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station in Snowdonia, Wales.

Recur, their 2013 LP for the Raster-Noton label, found them (apparently) returning to a trad studio environment but with a deeper stress on processing and compression. Where Emptyset’s vibe was regularly sci-fi tense, the curdled tones and heightened sense of abrasion that envelop the clinical repetition of Recur significantly increase an environment of foreboding. While quickening the pace from the field-trip EPs, during “Absence” they harken back to the ambient and at-times nature-tinged passages of Demiurge.

Since their ’11 LP, Emptyset has become even less tethered to rudiments of trad techno (an exception would be the “Collapsed” EP on Raster-Noton) and for the most part so it is with Borders. The qualifier is earned mainly through third track “Descent,” which sounds a bit like the music one might hear in a nightmarish cinematic club envisioned by Gaspar Noé.

Ginzburg and Purgas continue to process, compress and distort as they broaden the range of tactics by creating their own instruments, described in Thrill Jockey’s promo text “as a six-stringed zither-like instrument and a drum.” Doing so enhances the warmth in Emptyset’s sonic scheme, with the reverberation of the metal zither strips audible in Borders’ opening track “Body.”

This attention to the organic is unusual enough in the electronic field, but it becomes even more so when combined with the duo’s penchant for live performance. Hissing, pulsing, vibrating, thwacking, and achieving its own sturdy if still fairly alien momentum, “Body”’s three minutes also sounds like two guys in a room making experimental music.

This is not looking askance at the synthetic and the programmed, but simply observing that Emptyset are onto something different. If organic, the title track still acquires a machine-like repetitiveness that reinforces the industrial sensibility of earlier releases. This ambiance carries over to the beginning of “Descent,” lending the hellish dance-cavern soundtrack a distinct prelude.

Contrasting, “Across” (it should be plain by now that Emptyset prefer one-word titles) is less rhythmically insistent and by extension slightly more atmospheric. To the opposite extreme, the succinct “Speak” ups the rhythm as it approaches the neighborhood of song, with the zither-dulcimer-ish quality bringing a folk undercurrent to the whole. This characteristic extends into “Axis” alongside drone-like passages reminiscent of the speaker-ooze from a doom metal show, a comparison supporting Borders’ basis in live performance.

If by this point the LP’s essential nature has been revealed, it’s brief enough (like all their previous full-lengths) to avoid wearing thin. And with moderate variants; both “Sight” and “Reprieve” are cyclical decayed-note industrialism, but the latter’s engagement with tempo is distinct. The initial pulse of “Ascent” is quite cinematic, a bit like a nefarious pursuit in the park. “Ground” seems determined to become spastic but is constantly beset by rubbery distortion.

By comparison, “Dissolve” is almost crystalline, though true to its title as it progresses the finale’s surface begins to disintegrate. Borders is clearly not for all tastes, but the threads of difficulty in its fabric are interweaved with rigorousness and a lack of the grandiose. To the contrary, Emptyset’s ever-shifting musical landscape is presented in digestible doses, which in a marketplace where dead-horse flogging remains common, is downright refreshing.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-

 

 

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