We now join in on another exhilarating adventure with theoretically obsolete technology manipulated by two guys who know their way around a synthesizer and a 4/4 beat.
Ludus Pinsky has soldered his share of circuit boards and Alexander Robotnick, I’d guess, has burned out quite a few of ’em in his 30+ years of making dance floors buckle. Together they’re The Analog Session, and their first LP, April (after the month it was recorded) is one of a small number of electronic albums that wormed its way into my rotation and has remained in constant play ever since.
Black Ground is their new album and it’s darker, more lean – there’s not a note out of place or one to spare, despite the majority of the tracks (as with April) being born from on-the-spot improvisation. Robotnick has never entirely escaped his reputation in Italo Disco but with Pinsky, Black Ground shows him nimbly shifting from quasi-Acid House to cosmic Disco to the sinister pastiche of synth-pop in “We Are Here” with ease – and making exemplars from each genre. “My Dream” is the stand out track; “Black Ground” churns with a joy and enthusiasm and a new remix of April’s stand-out track, “Ascension,” seems like it’s about to tear these machines to pieces.
This is the original mix of Ascension. This has also been my morning alarm for the last two years.
I’m not even going to pretend to tell you what most of these tracks where made with, and I’m suspicious of anyone other than Pinsky and Robotnick who claims to know. The videos from April and the original Analog Session DVD show racks stacked high, almost seeming to grow partially on and partially from the wall, with thick bundles of wires like vines linking them together in a network that outsiders could only with difficulty (and the risk of electocution) navigate. I don’t think it matters: it’s never been the hardware, but the men playing it.
