On 2012's
1000 Vacuum Tubes, Sven Schienhammer aka
Quantec continues his way around electronic and dance music in a fashion that doesn't so much directly engage a listener as set a general mood. "Ayahuasca" feels like something redone from the late '90s, a post-dubstep that's more proto thanks to the skittering beats, bubbling dialogue samples, and calm smooth jazz backgrounds. But if everything is nostalgia then in some ways that's slightly fresher than reworking the early '80s once again, an attempt to reclaim fusion moves from a different era of reinterpretation. From there,
1000 Vacuum Tubes makes an easy way over a full CD's length of listening -- another nod to an era right there, actually -- whether on the steady beats of the "live extract" of the title tune or the easy groove of a song like "Eternal Soul." Sometimes there's just enough of a little extra tension in the arrangements that places the results even more firmly in the present -- "The Gathering" could be a nicely moody chase scene, even if the echoes and desolation already recall an era when dubstep wasn't designed for a pack of shouting bros. Meanwhile, "Rank and File" gets more engagingly energetic as it goes, providing a little boost of late activity for the album. ~ Ned Raggett