Blacklauren - the techno nom de guerre of Brooklyn’s Lesly Remy Jr. - works far beyond the reach of polite musical resolution. Enormous and pounding, these five tracks revel in what classically-minded listeners would consider dissonance - close intervals and flat fifths are expressed repetitively and hypnotically by whirling, searing synthesizers over undeniably kinetic drum programming. Harmonic ratios that less daring composers or improvisers would only ever use in the approach to resolution - or indeed would historically be considered demonic by early churches - are instead here the entire basis of these works. You are not permitted the safety of a return to a tonic chord, you are not permitted the boneheaded anticipation of a drop on the one, you are instead invited to savor the discomfort, everything progressing at a mechanical, unyielding techno sprint.
The result is a fascinating, disorienting space that ultimately works towards liberating the body. In the throbbing, unfamiliar harmonic churn of these body-rattling tracks something sublime bubbles up. Call it psychedelic, call it mesmerizing, call it mental, call it what you wish - but out amid the chug of the kick, as the unresolved melodies and clusters flutter unflinchingly, this freedom from resolution kicks you out of the airplane: it’s thrilling, it’s terrifying, it’s coming at you fast.
His work on these tracks can be described as devotional - with monastic dedication he makes certain to fire up Ableton and make some kind of sound every single day, hitting the YouTube tutorial dojo often or calling on fellow masters of dissonance Wata Igarashi or Linear System for expert guidance. He has also been a devotional fan of The Bunker New York, regularly attending our parties since 2010, appearing on several lineups and a pair of podcasts since then. Within the infinite universe of the DAW, he’s locked down a very particular set of instruments and presets, making great use of Reaktor’s realistic emulations of classic synthesizers. So his sonic signature is consistent, recognizable from track to track and also lovingly connected to the legacy of techno, plus the recordings are electric and alive. That’s the beautiful thing about going back to the same well again and again - you drink deeper with each dip.
Remy is also the founder of Nyabinghi Electronic Music, a fascinating label that arcwelds together the primal - like the pounding rhythms of Haitian Vodou, familiar to Blacklauren’s ears from his origins in Port-au-Prince - and the future - the various sonic technologies of the last fifty years, deployed precisely. Electrified into artistic ownership by the available time and inspiring swell of summer 2020’s Black Lives Matter actions, Remy makes explicit the label’s efforts to excavate the ceremonial aspects of techno and the futuristic summonings of African diasporic religious and cultural practices. In line with other tremendous futurists like the music and writings of DeForrest Brown, Jr. or the graffiti-as-starship designs of Rammellzee, Blacklauren’s work with the label and on this release sounds like sirens that are ever-approaching, doppler bending as they continually arrive - we’re here in the emergency but still we jubilate.
The defiant harmonic techniques on Through Stone and Circle call to mind another Black master - the great jazz saxophonist and avant garde composer Anthony Braxton, whose equal love of the greats of hard bop and the second Viennese school twelve-tone composers brought him to create work in various modes that is impossibly knotty and similarly joyfully dissonant. In his acceptance of the National Endowment of the Arts’ title of Jazz Master, Braxton is quoted as saying that “the story of creative music is the story of America and the story of composite human vibrational dynamics. The discipline of creative music is one of the greatest gifts that the cosmic forces have given us.” Blacklauren, captured here at his most fiercely generative, knows these same cosmos well. Here we’re given a map, a star chart, a vessel to pilot beyond the other side of the sun.
Mastered by Tim Xavier at Manmade Mastering
Artwork by Andrew Charles Edman
Liner Notes by Ben Seretan
