CDX, the fifth physical release by Les Cousins Dangereux (born Tim Thornton) invites you into a hermeneutic chamber of throwback acid techno — all strictly analog, all recorded live to cassette — and seals the pod bay doors behind you. In your tabula rasa world, newly bereft of historical context, Aphex Twin never made music, video games never existed, and Arrested Development never aired. Feeling liberated (✿◠‿◠), you load the tape into the chamber’s deck. Synth melodies, complex rhythmic grids, and propulsive song structures fly at you faster than you can process them. The tape airs its collage of hypnotizing major-key leads, slamming break beats, and noise-blasted effect manipulations as you sit cross-legged in the pod’s circular atrium. When one side ends, you flip the tape. When that side ends, you flip the tape. When that side ends, you flip the tape. Many moons pass.
Starved, desperate for sunlight, you crack through the pod’s glass and escape back into the world of 2014, still clutching CDX. Flooded again with memories of Analogue Bubblebath, Mega Man X, and the forbidden relationship between George Michael and Maebe, the tape in your hand makes less sense than it did before. You imagine its creator surrounded by synthesizers and drum machines, programming the album’s components in a basement studio somewhere near Cleveland. With the elements in place, he performs his compositions in bursts of extreme multi-tasking. You put the tape back in your deck at home and let it loop again, thinking fondly of your days in the pod.
CDX is physically available now from Thornton himself via his Bandcamp page. His remarkable music as Tiger Village, the exploratory synth / drone project that runs parallel to Les Cousins Dangereux, also demands your attention.
• Les Cousins Dangereux: https://soundcloud.com/lescousinsdangereux
More about: Les Cousins Dangereux
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