Electronic dance music has come a long way since the days of
Kraftwerk. And the glitch-happy abstract techno label DUB (a sub-label of Clone, originally named Djak-Up-Bitch) is a fine example of the music's advancement.
Nummer Drie (Number Three) is a collection of the label's singles and unreleased material. It captures the futurism of
Kraftwerk's electronic machine pulses and mixes that with Stockhausen's concerns of rhythm and repetition. Reminscent of early Warp recordings, the skittering and sweeping beats found on
Nummer Drie examine sonic space in a way that few artists do, except for some European abstract labels. Each of the disc's cuts are both hyper-hypnotic and beat-driven, weaving together low-frequency melodies hidden beneath many clicks and blips.
Nummer Drie is filled with dreamlike soundscapes and distorted breaks -- a type of intelligent dance music that is hardly intended for dancing where the tones range from dark and forboding to indulgent and hopeful. It begins with the deconstructed rhythms and skeletal melodies of Swap's "Velth." Also included are a pair of tracks from Autophonic, first with the gently paced swirly number "Seclusion" and then tying off the record with a brilliant broken and distorted "Vicious Circles." Many other cutting edge electronic artists make themselves heard here such as Funckarma, L'usine, Syndrome, and Phako.
Nummer Drie provides a great first look into the DUB label and into abstract electronic music. ~ Ken Taylor