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With all of the fuss about file sharing, i find it fascinating that some labels exist entirely on the Internet, giving away free music to whomever chooses to download. My fascination with this new marketing style leads me to download quite a few songs from various "netlabels", and the Idioma EP by Mexican laptopper Fax is one of the better releases i have downloaded.
This EP was released on the Interdisco label out of Basle, Switzerland. It is the label's 9th release, and is certainly well worth the download. If you are interested, they have quite a bit of interesting electronica up on their website.
There are four tracks on Idioma, let me go over each.
Nada Que Declarar is a happy little tune dominated by a nice chugging beat and an abbreviated hi-hat hit. Keyboards noodle about in the foreground, and the dominant beat makes this almost a silly light dance number. It's head-boppingly fun though.
The next tune, Desierto reminds me of some of the mellower early 90s electronica, like Psychic TV's Beyond thee Infinite Beat album. The barest hint of a beat grooves along in deep bass mode, with a stuttering hi-hat over top. Against this background, Fax plays light keyboards in a variety of samples. It's quiet and dubby. Good music for driving to, or sitting around your home. I really like this tune.
Elevador is next, and is similar in tone to Desierto. Both of these songs could have come from any of the mellowish early 90s electronica samplers i have. I guess that this is proto-trance music, where the beat is inexorable, but still subdued. Anyway, on Elevador, Fax combines his beat with an echoed keyboard riff that apparently wandered in from a King Tubby album. This is nice and dubby, and continues the general mood of the EP.
Finally, Fax ends the EP with Cian. The previous three songs were all sort of the same, a skeletal framework of a beat with something that had a slightly dub feel layered overtop. This song starts out differently, with more layers of samples, and continues to impress with its difference. It's still rather mellow in a head-bopping kind of way, but here Fax combines his standard beat with a nice bass riff, and some strange keyboard warblings. This is the richest, most fleshed out song on the EP, but it's not busy by any stretch of the imagination Again, this is a good tune, and moves along rather nicely.
Overall, i find this to be fun, mellow, electronic dub. The whole EP lasts just barely 22 minutes, so the sameness of the tracks doesn't get old. I would wager that fans of Casino vs. Japan and Loscil will find it to be enjoyable and something worth downloading. Otherwise, well, it is free, and in my opinion well worth the bandwidth.
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