The incongruity between the Miami residence of Schematic Records and the harsh machine music that is the label's specialty is disarming. Even a fan of all things cold and calculated cannot imagine anything less appropriate for the palm lined boulevards and sun-soaked beaches. Even at its most rundown and industrial, there is still too much mold and moss in the city's street cracks for this sort of inorganic display of sound. Of course, this is exactly the kind of thinking that
Richard Devine is reacting against.
Devine has clearly put a lot of effort into defying the instinctual mandate to produce sweaty Latin or electro when living in paradise.
Aleamapper virtually eliminates the funky if disjointed rhythms found on his
Lip Switch album. Instead, the low rumbles of gigantic spacecraft are brought to the fore, with chipper electronic shards crisscrossing the monolithic expanses. The occasional beats found on "Vecpr" and "Step Focus" do little to reattach
Devine to his Florida roots, instead pulling heavily from the Northern England sound of Warp Records. Even the out-of-focus whale moans and seagull calls on "Veolic Revolving" invoke the image of grey harbors as opposed to sultry bays. At times,
Devine synchs with the European technicians he clearly admires, particularly on "Float 32" where he achieves the weightlessness of
Aphex Twin in his
Selected Ambient Works phase. But most of these diversions from the southern sun feel to heavy and affected. It is harder than you might think to defy one's environment. [The CD was also released with bonus tracks.]