Pictureplane - Technomancer [Anticon - 2015]Technomancer is an album that blends together elements of 80’s & 90’s dance/electronica to create a work that seems to exists its own distinctive retro future styled sonic reality. Pictureplane (aka Travis Egedy) is an US electronic producer who has been creating work since the early 2000’s- he’s most know for helping create the ‘witchhouse’ genre( which mixers together chopped-up & off-kilter hip hop beats with industrial & noise elements, and horror themes). He’s also dipped his toes in genres such as dark wave & other retro focused electronica genres. He’s put out work on labels such as Lovepump United Records & Isomorph Records- this new release appears on Anticon records. Technomancer takes in eleven tracks in all, and these for the most part are fairly short- with the majority having a running time around the three minute mark, and a just few over the four minute mark. These tracks mix together moody 80’s EBM, throbbing & atmospheric synth craft, 90’s house( both underground & more pop-bound), more up-beat dark wave, dark synth pop, and a few darts into lo-fi 80’s industrial music. This is topped by a mix of Egedy vocals( which are fairly subbed & semi spoken), 80’s house diva wails, and subtle selection of 90’s sampling & scratching On the whole it's a worthy & well put together release- with Egedy managing to mix memorability with 80’s/ 90’s atmosphere, and a neat kinda of retro futuristic vibe. I guess the only thing that does let some tracks down are the lack of power & depth in his vocals which at times do feel a little insipid - but thankfully he mostly surrounds his vocals with samples & the house diva vocalising, and these pull the whole thing up. Roger Batty
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