Under the genuinely sonic aspect, this new album by Portuguese duo Sturqen (real names David Arantes and Cesar Rodrigues, from Oporto) for the knowingly excellent label Kvitnu, which cab be reasonably considered a milestone for lovers of power electronics, industrial techno, rhythmic noise and acid sonorities, maybe cannot be considered a fully fledged turning point, if you know the approach they followed on their previous outputs. In the first part, it’s reminiscent, rather, of the acid stage of so-called elektro of the late 90ies (a branch of techno, siphoning elements of acid trance, who got packed into disorienting hyper-compressed epileptic rhythmical patterns), by following a pattern followed by many contemporary techno producers, who are massively reprising those sounds. Besides the (valuable) exercise in style (tracks like “Nervos”, the stifling “Nuz” or “Novag” – the moment where these folk gets closer to some of the highest points reached in that niche by artists of labels like Rephlex, UR or Tresor -), the concept of this album could explain its structure: the first confusing and somehow unpleasant tracks, departing by the intro “Aranha” (Portuguese for ‘spider’) and the nervously acid glue of the already quoted “Nervos”, seems to translate into sound the likewise confusing and disorienting world, where we live, whose timely traps and cages, where metal bars have been replaced by likewise unbending illusions. The following tracks seem to render a gradual awareness of such a concrete dystopia, a sort of carnival mirroring that cyclicality (as suggested by the strangling progression of “Hegel”) of a history that becomes more and more smothering. The last (and the longest) track, titled “Energia”, seems to cement both Sturqen’s conceptual framework and the previous aural clues by a viscous electric storm, that sounds like a distorted declension of some obscure stuff by Gwenn Tremorin
(Flint Glass).
