There’s only so far the composer of harsh minimalist techno can take their work and by the time they’ve realised this, self-parody beckons. Brighton’s [a]Tobias Schmidt[/a], on the other hand, checked out early. Sure, his debut album proper is released on Berlin’s purer-than-thou techno label Tresor next month and that, by all accounts, is streamlined business as usual. But for now, on this, confusingly his second LP, Schmidt prises open his soul and lifts the lid on one of techno’s darkest secrets: yes, even these stoics of emotion-free beats and black sweaty nights have trouble with girls.
It helps that during the recording of ‘Le Chimp Atomique’ Schmidt appears to have lost his mind. His inability to think straight, though, has resulted in a record that snatches the freaked, distorted soul baton from his friends Super_Collider and dashes into the cellar, shrieking.
What we’re left with is a peculiar cousin to Green Velvet‘s successfully self-indulgent ‘Constant Chaos’, with Schmidt moaning raddled truisms like, “The weekend I can’t remember is the one I’ll never forget” over rude electro stabs on ‘Weekend’, or baffling his lady with the line, “You don’t need a dictionary to live next to me” during ‘Change You’‘s eerie clattering.
Forget the dictionary, then. Just keep an open mind.