Call Super: Tingling techno tones

SERvin’ Up! – w/c November 20, 2017

Blitzen Trapper – Wild and Reckless
Lo Carmen – Lovers Dreamers Fighters
Sumie – Lost In Light
Whitney – Light Upon The Lake: Demo Recordings
Golden Teacher – No Luscious Life
Call Super – Arpo
Horace Andy – Good Vibes
Karl Blau – Out Her Space
North Arm – Let Love Through
Spinning Coin – Permo
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Glasgow’s Golden Teacher are named after a strand of magic mushroom and appropriately, their music is really some kind of trip as well. Their debut album No Luscious Life – released by dance mavericks and reconnaissance men Optimo – often sounds like Grace Jones riffing wildly like she herself partook in the lessons of a Golden Teacher with its dance-fevered percussive acid-washed disco funk. Other times throughout you can hear echoes of industrial, post-punk and dub, finding warped inspiration from some of the great UK acts coming out of the 70s and early 80s like The Slits and more overtly, ESG from the US. However, No Luscious Life is bent to such a point of weird near-perfection that if they keep hammering away on a limb that’s all their own, they might themselves prove an influence some time down the line.

Arpo, the second album from British-born, Berlin-based producer Joe Seaton as Call Super delivers further on his pursuit of more vivid visions for techno heard on his debut, Suzi Ecto. Arpo is positively tingling with ideas within its bubbling textures built on many microsounds for a set more heartful than heady. There’s a giddy feeling to Arpo that techno’s insistence on precision too often rules out in favour of driving the dancefloor hard – Seaton’s nimble and fluid pieces move with a jazzy playfulness (his father was in fact a jazz musician), scoped out with the detail of a sound design artist. It’s exciting to hear Arpo and its sense of possibility matching its immaculate craft.