na: aril brikha

When you first get into electronic music, you’ll soon learn that (far more than rock music) it’s all about the label. Back before everybody and their brother had a MySpace page, it was almost all you had to go on in the faceless world of techno. If it wasn’t for the Transmat imprint, for instance, I never would’ve heard Aril Brikha before today.

But back in the early ’00s Transmat was definitely on my radar and I picked up the stunning Deeparture in Time. We don’t have that album, unfortunately, but we do have the Iranian-born, Swedish-residing, Detroit-aping producer’s second album, released (finally!) today on Peacefrog.

There are a lot of similarities between Ex Machina and its predecessor. The sound is a really gorgeous mix of deep house’s lush melodies and techno’s unrelenting rhythmic stiffness. While most of this stuff will sound pretty anonymous and same-y on first listen, I’ve been listening all day to tracks like “Room 337″ (which was, rightfully, the album’s single) and the self-explanatory “Kind of Nitzer” and each track is finally beginning to differentiate itself and open up to me. Deeparture in Time was the exact same way – so I imagine this one’ll be on heavy rotation for the rest of the year.

For further listening, check out the B-side to his Winter EP on Kompakt: “Berghain.” Definitely one of my favorite tracks to mix into and out of this year. (”Kept Within” from Ex Machina is rather similar, I’ve found.)