Pitchfork

The title of the track-- first released on a split single from the Liebe Detail label and now collected on Efdemin's solo CD for Dial-- means "Wages and Bread", but a more fitting name might have been "Bread and Circuses". In the beginning, atop a wooden horse with gold trim and a paint-chipped grimace, you find yourself idling in carousel circles, rising in falling in time to a jaunty calliope. It's a vision of house music reclaiming its roots in clockworks and organ stops. But a strange thing happens as you spin: the ceiling turns to a black velvet cloak of night that extends to the horizon, flecked with pinprick stars; the demure oom-pah-pah figure morphs into a brassy alarum. Cold winds whip your face as the round-and-round refrain slips a gear and goes rolling swiftly away, a soft clatter of brass rings marking distance behind. Repetition's but the clatter of hooves; everything else ribbons out towards the unknowable.

[from Efdemin; out now on Dial]