- Presenting your latest release as “a data dump from [my] array of maxed-out hard drives” is not the most inspiring description of the artistic process. Some people’s hard drives are better than others though, right?
Brian Foote has been pumping out the -in his words- ‘jams eternal’ since the ‘90s, producing music for himself, his old band (Nudge) and for any number of other people (just go and check out his listings on Discogs, rubbing shoulders with all sorts: Atlas Sounds, Stephen Malkmus, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Zola Jesus, among others). With all of that, the claims of low disk space sound credible at least.
As per the diversity of his commitments, which stretch to managing his own record label Peak Oil and his involvement with the revered Kranky, Foote’s work under the Leech moniker covers quite a lot of ground, all by itself. I’m not completely across his personal output, but, stretching back across the decade, a lot of what I’ve heard has an unexpectedly UK Garage / two-step feel. The pleasingly syncopated rhythms, the canned deep house vocals and the slightly fuzzy production atmosphere all lead me in that direction; sometimes I’m put in mind of Burial’s hazy world, although Leech is often too far into techno to be mistaken for that.
I was surprised because there’s a subtle disconnect between the past you’ll find on Leech’s Soundcloud and his present Data Horde. It really is subtle and there are more similarities than differences: it’s still the ‘90s, it’s still got syncopated beats, it’s still lost in a haze and it’s very obvious that Leech has an enduring passion for acid techno. The handful of differences turn out to be key, however and the most significant of these is the lack of lo-fi house divas samples, which immediately cancels cuts off any of Leech’s previous flirtation with house.
What we do get, at a very measured pace, is a layering of styles. I imagine that the vast quantity of material Foote had to choose from made it much easier to track Data Horde with such a precise gradient: it has the slow, emergent quality of a butterfly finding its way out of a chrysalis. It’s opener, Amethyst, presents with the beat deeply submerged and the ambient / dub atmosphere pulsing lazily in the foreground. Brace kicks it up a notch with a skittering, trebly beat that’s all over the place; if there was more than the barest hint of bass it’d be jungle, but Foote’s build-up spans much of the record and there’s no way he’s blowing it this early on. Patience is rewarded and the dancefloor promise is fulfilled as Phoenix9V takes the same high BPM rhythm and tricks it out which cycling arpeggios, ambient squelches, bass and all manner of melodic and white noises jostling around in the innards. Nimble hits the brakes to take a run-up at a more obvious ambient techno cut, tricked out with giant fragments of what would be drum’n’bass, if it wasn’t floating around, all in pieces. Delysid changes the focus again and suddenly those frenetic rhythms are jumbling around like the old school IDM of Squarepusher. Bit Rot doubles down on all of that, offering what is almost a big dancefloor finish, with propulsive jungle action. Foote is determined, however, not to make it that easy, turning up the distortion and, more importantly skewing the EQ so that the mid-range frequencies are right up front and all that dancefloor action? Well much of that sounds like its happening in another room.
That’s emblematic of my only problem with this record. Foote is completely aware of how much of a nostalgia kick he’s on and, perhaps a little embarrassed by it, he’s a little gun shy when it comes to delivering full, dancefloor fan service, dressing everything up in experimental frippery. It's clever, often impressive and I completely understand that motivation, but if you’re going to take a trip down memory lane, you should at least see all the sights. Having said that, my guilty pleasures from the past are very similar to Brian Foote’s and Data Horde is a smart, nuanced recollection of the best moments of a great era for dance music. While no-one will worry if I delete and recycle the next time I need to free up some space, on the evidence of this record, losing the contents of Leech’s raid-array would be a crime.
- Chris Cobcroft.