home > browse > cd-feature > view article

Net Feature/ Cheslo: "Disko Melua EP"

  Tobias

Three-and-a-half minutes into „Oh Yes“, the second track of this digital Mini-Album, a crowd of beer-happy ravers seize their chance of laying down a glorious a capella concert, shouting „I love techno“ to the melody of „Satisfaction“ before the beat stomps back in, synthesizer bass lines convulsing and cringeing and a bleepy two-tone theme pulls and plucks the listener's nervous system like a lasso being thrown from the dance floor. It is a moment which sums up this release, and Cheslo's approach to music like no other.

The message is clear: Techno should be fun, it should be diverse and it need not shy away from humour. „Disco Melua“ is both a personal portrait and a powerful portfolio of a producer capable of personifying a plethora of styles. Opener „Hunbo Loras“ sends out waves of trance and rhythmically echoing dubstabs over a simple four to the floor kick drum and hihat pattern only once or twice breaking for a short breath of fender rhodes, „Humne“ is a minimal, bonedry electrofunk machinery jumping in metric motion and „Oktopar Advanced“ an even more skeletised, surreal square dance.

While a certain openness towards adjacent genres and broad techniques and tools are no longer as outrageously unusual as they once were, the simultaneity of light and darkness makes Cheslo stand out from the fold. His pieces are openly indebted to the twilight and strobelight-thunderstorms of the dancefloor, to their mysterious magic and inexplicable nightly energy. On the other hand, they are also full of warmth and human emotions, never hiding in a shell of coolness just for the sake of it.

The title track is a good case in point. Cheslo slows the tempo way down, builds the track texturally and creates a dense mood by contrasting pronouncedly hammered chords with a mighty analog bass line. Nothing much happens in these seven minutes, with only soft hihats fading in and out ocasionally, but it never looses its momentum. Closer „Ringo Dance“, meanwhile, is marked by a playful use of samples and even a short vocal interlude in his German mothertongue.

Thanks to its eclectic nature, „Disco Melua“ is both an invitation to hit the club and to listen with both eyes closed. Just like previous records on DCC Records, it comes clad in a cinematic and crystal-clear sound, which turns it into a glistening and shimmering piece of electronic music rather than just a collection of tracks to blend in with any ol' DJ set. Despite all of the lightheartedness on display here, this love is for real.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Cheslo
Homepage; DCC Records