The Home Current rounds off an almost embarrassingly productive year by leaning into his house and techno influences on the Palermo Traxx Vol 2 EP

To say that both The Home Current and the Castles in Space label have had a productive year would be a serious understatement. But here they are near the end of 2019, together again, some time after the house-of-synth win of The Home Current’s Civilian Leather. Palermo Traxx Vol 2 is an EP of more dancefloor oriented cuts from Martin Jensen. The lack of a volume one implies a heady narrative. That exists – if it can be said to exist at all – as an imaginary or apocryphal 12”, offering up the deepest of deep cuts then.

Returning to the real with volume two, opener “Liquid Lovers” starts out with sauntering broken beats that manage a full minute before betraying what’s really going on. Molten metal stabs signal the shift and the 4/4 kick confirms that The Home Current is indeed flowing in a different electronic direction on this release. Although, it must be said, Civilian Leather didn’t disguise Jensen’s love of house and techno. It did however whet the appetite for a Home Current release that embraced those more purely club orientated structures. There’s a back to roots approach on display here, with echoes of early nineties R&S and the Soma stable. The production is crisp and up to date, but the tone retains that out-of-the-bottle feeling of classic rave. Jensen is enjoying himself and it comes across with a subtle infectiousness.

Burbling electronics and trance-not-trance spiritual washes are the entry points into “Driftwood”, before it comes on strong like a jacked-up Kraftwerk. This would’ve played well in Glasgow’s The Arches (RIP). “Rotary Meadows” is a bass-heavy tornado of alien voices and higher states of consciousness synthscapes. It gets slightly dubby in the way that certain progressive house (before that became a dirty term) tunes managed on labels such as Guerilla. The clipped electro of “Them Days” has the energy of a panic button being pushed as it rides its bassline like a Pixies song does. Whereas “Brittle Morning” has been dipped in a delightfully analogue bubblebath and is convincingly metallic. “Pretty Cage” then deftly balances abstract techno with tracky, enveloping house; hear how it bleeps, gurgles and bounces.

Packaged up with this release if you want it (you definitely want it), is a mix CD built out of unreleased Home Current tracks. An Evening with The Home Current is thus a very fine auteur dj set taking in tran(s)cendent house, stripped back and heated-up techno, and EBM-tinged synth moves. In other words, it explores the varying sonic fields of Civilian Leather and Palermo Traxx Vol 2 and proves them to be beautifully compatible. A warning: do not operate heavy machinery while listening, for this is machine music that provokes an emotional response. Just under two minutes in and your hands will be in the air, regardless of what else you’re doing at the time. The guilty party drop comes off like Jam & Spoon’s “Stella” with rave programming. Which, as I’m sure you realise, is worth giving yourself up to.

thehomecurrent-cis.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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