Harmonic 313: When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

This here album by Harmonic 313 is not new in at least two senses: it has been out a while; and there’s nothing desperately ground-shakingly-breakingly radical about its sounds. Yet despite the latter, it’s managing to maintain heavy rotation on various listening devices. It’s currently in my ‘in need of electronica, put this on’ file.

Much has been made of Yeovil’s Mark Pritchard’s debt to Detroit in his electronic offerings and you can see why with many of the tracks offering various nods to Motor City – the shuddering bass on opener ‘Dirtbox’ being an obvious exemplar. But elsewhere these old cloth ears of mine hear the body-jerks of Chicago house with ‘No Way Out’ having something of the DJ Sneak on Relief Records about it. I’d love to have it on vinyl in order to work the pitch slider up a few notches. Elsewhere, on ‘Koln’ and ‘Galag A’, you find the haunting and studied innocence of Boards of Canada and the stuttering off-kilter drums that Autechre have seemingly made their own.

Initially I found myself sighing heavily at the use of a Speak & Spell style vocoder on ‘Word Problems’, but the cliché has since retired to the background as the funk has come to the fore. Plus it makes a great soundtrack to the game on his website to win a new mp3. Note: not one for the colour blind and yes I’ve done it, but I’m giving away neither the solutions nor the track.

Dirtbox

Koln

Word Problems

Purchase via this link

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