Track-by-Track: Cool and Frank – Contacts in the Unseen World EP

Cool-and-Frank-Contacts-in-the-Unseen-World

Big poppy EDM is everywhere, but there is loads of awesome dance music with discordance, clanging reverb, free jazz samples, and wild space lasers too. I grew up loving those sounds in Drexciya and Aphex Twin, and hear them in Berlin and Detroit techno. 

That kind of music is made everywhere really, and by all kinds of different people. I’m talking about Binh, So Inagawa, Helena Hauff, and all the way back to the founders, Belleville Three. I should say here that techno and its royalty are undergoing an important assessment and re-examination these days. It’s too important and complex for this little ditty, but if you love this kind of music I’d encourage you to read up on what’s happening.

Anyway, I made these tracks with those artists in mind, mostly with a Korg Minilogue, Arturia DrumBrute, Volca Bass, Roland TR-8s, and Reason. They all appear on a vinyl-only release on FLAWed Records, which is based in London. You can buy the EP here.


Contacts in the Unseen World

This is supposed to be a fun off-kilter club jam. A lot of basslines in techno are one, maybe two notes. This one isn’t much more than that, but I’d like to think it’s a bit more complex, with some intense reverb and a just-off rhythm. And I really like how the bass is harsh and skronky and bouncy and the Minilogue lead, which comes in later, sounds smooth.


Solutions Concepts Dream Interpretations

This one may be less club-ready, but maybe it will find its way into mixes. I really enjoy titling tracks, which is a bit of a farce for lyric-less techno. For titles, I try to capture the vibe of the track or just use a phrase I like. In this case, this is a jokey tagline about a made-up science consultancy. I like the idea of a serious business bro selling his bullshit with typical business jargon, but also genuinely offering dream interpretation services, like “your teeth falling out means you’re in love with your cousin.” That’s not to say I think dreams are bullshit. I love dreams and think they’re really important! Business jargon, much less so!


Etothepii

So e^π*i = -1. We all know about π. e is a little more arcane. Like π it’s just a number, a constant, it’s like 2.71 blah blah and is defined in a couple different ways. I remember learning it when f(x) = e^x was something I had to think about. And lastly, i is the basis for complex numbers and is defined as i^2 = -1. Anyway it’s nuts to me that you throw all those into a pot and get -1.


Basal Whale

This one is supposed to be the track that travels, it goes from a simple bass and drum pattern to a spacey, almost-disco thing. I do DJ sometimes, and like to play a couple Lindstrom tracks when I think things are really peaking because it’s really ecstatic disco / techno.

I love whales. They are so mysterious and diverse: you have the great sagacious blue whale and then the villians of whales who hunt for fun and torture their victims, orcas. We share a common ancestor, and that little mammal led to the first seafaring mammal, and then to a big guy. That’s the basal whale. So it’s reasonable to imagine that whales are probably wicked smart. I like to think about opening the newspaper one day and seeing an article about how scientists have discovered whales have a religion. What would the evidence be? How did they figure it out? What does the religion entail? What do the skeptics say? Good times.


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