1080p, a new cassette label by Richard MacFarlane (Rose Quartz, ex-TMTer), debuted mid-June, but it already has three solid releases to its name. While the label’s first release, Heartbeat(s)’ Home Remedies, was a full-on dance hybrid of Detroit techno and 90s-flavored Chicago house, it was soon followed up with Brain Foam, an oblique dance release whose rhythmic pulses serve as a foundation upon which artists Roland Tings (a.k.a. Rohan Newman) and his bud Nathan Savage pile an array of competing yet fluid textures.
Melbourne-based producer Roland Tings is no stranger to the beat, having already released music through Not Not Fun and 100% Silk, but on “Shiver,” the thud is replaced by an indifferent click, a strategy that allows Tings & Savage’s raw, frenzied improvisations to shine, with hissing amps and wild delays threatening to overtake the track. Eventually, the clicking unceremoniously disappears, but you don’t notice, because here, it’s about the subsumption of implied rhythms under a roomy impressionism that registers on an entirely different head space.
Brain Foam is out now on 1080p. We’re grindin’ the label’s following release, by M/M, so look for that soon.
• Roland Tings: http://www.rolandtings.com
• 1080p: http://www.1080pcollection.net