If you’re making a record and you want it to sound like 10 million bucks, there’s no easier and more reliable way than by shipping those tunes off to Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. There’s a borderline-hilarious amount of evidence backing up this claim — check the credits for anything on PAN, Editions Mego + its sublabels, and let’s say 70% of current stock at Mimaroglu and you’re going to see that Becker personally mastered and cut the vinyl. Another way to check for his presence is by putting on any electronics-focused album you’ve bought in the last five years and noting whether the sounds hop out of the speakers and form a razor-sharp auditory hologram on the floor in front of you. Keep it on the D, but I heard Bee Mask’s records sound like Ariel Pink demos until Rashad Becker gets his hands on ‘em.
And yet, for all his superhuman abilities, at the end of the work day he’s ready to unwind like anyone else — by masterbating. [*Mile-Long Slide Whistle*]!!! But seriously: Rashad Becker recorded and mastered his own full-length album, Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I, and it’s dropping later this month on PAN in one of their usual gorgeously designed PVC vinyl sleeves. The record is divided between “Chants & Dances” and “Themes,” and you can listen to one of those dances below. Press for the album describes Vol. I as “a masterpiece of focussed non-referential electronic environments,” so don’t expect to find a beat to follow or even a floor to stand on, yet all the digital stretching, shard-tossing, and multilayered disorientation ends up being experienced as something more tactile than reality. If you’re not following, how’s this: “Themes II” sounds a little bit like if Daffy Duck got cranky as hell and started shoving glass marbles into his mouth, grinding them down with a diamond-rimmed beak and then firing them out at Walt Disney, who’s chained to a vibrating waterbed and still recovering from a rare disease he picked up in the jungles of Peru. Y’know?
Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I Side A (chants & dances):
01. Dances I
02. Dances II
03. Dances III
04. Dances IV
Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I Side B (themes):
01. Themes I
02. Themes II
03. Themes III
04. Themes IV
• Rashad Becker: http://www.clunk.de
• PAN: https://pan-act.com
More about: Rashad Becker
