Optimo Music Digital Danceforce presents Frank Rodas’s persuasive debut EP of industrial, proto-techno, dystopian electro and spectral acid house

The digital only division of Glasgow’s Optimo Music is all about getting the most thrilling electronic music out into the world as quickly as possible, bypassing the inevitable delays of vinyl plants. It is quite often also about firsts, as it is here with the debut EP from London DJ and producer Frank Rodas. There is clearly a lot more to come from Rodas, for this is the sound of an aesthetic fully realised and masterfully executed, yet fired-up with the shock of the new.

“The Sellout” muscles its way in with industrial persuasion; a high-heeled foot against the throat, just holding off of punishment. TG electronic groans and melodic synth turns worthy of Chris Carter fuel this reflective and provocative proto-techno cut. Rodas locates and channels the soulfulness of early machine music, those rudimentary excursions into the unknown that exposed the future like welcome wounds and remain just as evocative today. The stuttering beats and broken human transmissions of “Mandroid” create a dystopian electro call to arms. It doesn’t attempt to break out of its cavernous interiority, maintaining an enveloping pace and tone that gets into the bloodstream like nanobots ready to dine on new flesh. “0001” then submits to the gods of acid, delivering doom-laden 303 squelch that opens a consciousness escape hatch, letting in those lost-in-the-moment thought processes that occur on the most transformative of dancefloors.

Rodas doesn’t stand still, constantly digging deeper into his record collection via a multiplicity of routes. On “Labyrinths” he feeds early rave anthems through a haunted interface – spectral vocals bleeding from memory as if Burial were making acid house. The steady pulse and hints of decades-past nights out behind the veil lend the track a peculiar power. Which leaves “Obsess” to ascend into the night, a robust existential workout fuelled by synths on the edge of a waking dream. The Sellout EP cannot be pinned down to one thing or another, but neither can it be accused of lacking cohesion. Frank Rodas has crafted the equivalent of a deceptively experimental noir novel – living and breathing its roots whilst quietly carving out new territories, as dark as it is inviting.

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Stewart Gardiner
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