Pitchfork

Music criticism (and listening for that matter) is never an exact art. As context shifts, so too does a record's resonance and weight-- looking back at 2003, I couldn't help considering which albums I had under- or overrated. Among those that I listen to more often now than I had thought I would are Richard X's Presents His X-Factor, Vol. 1 and Tobias Thomas' Smallville. Richard X is pop distilled, from start to finish, but Thomas' mix disc glides gracefully from the beatless to buoyant without any jarring moves. It's no surprise, then, that its bridge-crossing center features a couple of tracks from the Berlin-based, Kompakt-distributed, Marco Haas (T. Raumschmiere)-owned Shitkatapult label, whose minimalism and skittery, almost glitch-like beats marry the ambient and the experimental.

Smallville includes a track each from Swede Anders Ilar and Finn Sami Koivikko-- two of three members of the Shitkatapult roster to release albums in 2003. The third is Apparat (Sascha Ring), whose Duplex LP veers away from the dub-meets-ambient and tech-house paths walked by Ilar and Koivikko, respectively, and sticks closer to more familiar, worn IDM roads. What Apparat does so differently from most of his bleeps-and-bloops counterparts is saturate the listener with a variety of sounds, from the sandpaper glitch of "Granular Bastards" to the horn-laden "Negro Modelo" to the tone poems of "Contradiction" and "Wooden", each of which feature vocalist Klas Yngborn.

Despite his prevalence for creating a frozen ambient base in which he can skate and etch different grooves, Apparat is most engaging when he takes a maximalist approach. Which isn't to say that Duplex is an album of all left turns-- it's simply powered by its will to continue moving forward, never allowing its songs to settle firmly into melodies, nor leading its listeners merely in circles. Indeed, Apparat brings these songs to life by delicately coaxing a range of sounds from his IDM core: tracks such as "Interrupt" and "Warm Signal" begin with low hums, but seem to yearn to break out of their shells-- and when they do, whether it's with warm tones or a thumping bass, the effect is that same: a sort of journey not so much through sound, but from it, an audio exploratory than seems organic and somehow idyllic. "Wooden", with its martial beat and quivering melody, almost sounds avant-folk, delicately blending the acoustic and electronic like one of George's tracks through the woods.

Saxophone and clarinet, Eastern melodies, road-movie-meets-Western guitar, Aphex-like bouncing balls, and the childlike ticks and tocks of Plone also adorn the record, each emerging naturally rather than seeming like window dressing. The result is clicks and cuts without the bells and whistles-- an IDM record you can love in a time when too many artists working within the genre seem as if they'd rather merely impress you.