Rapt is where early nineties R&S Records style techno is stripped and slowed into ambient drone works for sleepless nights

A house is a machine for living. So imagine living inside “Plastic Dreams” by Jaydee. Adopt core elements of the seminal techno track from R&S Records and build new structures that will function as a home. Because this might just be what Jacob Ware – aka Rapt – has done. Rapt is a somnambulistic journey in five acts (numbered I – V), each of which feels like the investigation of a theme. Ideas develop and repeat, drift away and return. It has the thematic glue of an ambient drone work constructed for an art installation and the trancelike techno drive of nineties R&S cuts.

Buried in the oceans of sound are unrecognisable samples of some of Ware’s favourite composers. Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra and Richard Strauss supposedly rub up against each other on “IV” although it would be near impossible to detect anything but Strauss, and only then as a distant influence via 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ware uses sampling and manipulation as a means to bypass the anxiety of influence, working alongside rather than reacting against admired artists.

Rapt recalls the overall tone and mood of a Michael Mann soundtrack, specifically Heat. Think Elliot Goldenthal working alongside the Kronos Quartet. But don’t forget R&S techno, stripped and slowed to the speed of sleepless nights.

rapt.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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