Recondite – On Acid

April 2, 2012 • Absurd Recordings / Acid Test

My exploration of house music continues with something a bit more modern: Recondite, another name I've never heard of but figured I'd look into just for kicks. On Acid is, as its name implies, acid house, with a subtle and effective minimalist attitude.

It's an incredibly simple album—heavy and deep bass beats, with plenty of melody carefully laid on top and a light hint of reverb. It has a sort of underwater sort of sound going on, like something you'd hear in a futuristic documentary about ocean depths. It's almost hypnotic in the way it slowly draws the listener in, carries them along, and lets them go. The use of dynamics in the album is amazing most of the time—take the swelling middle section of "Harbinger"; it's incredibly tense but resolves it in a very satisfying way.

To my plebeian ears, On Acid has the drawback of being a bit samey and repetitive; though like a lot of minimal electronic music it has the advantage of not really requiring the listener's full attention. On the other hand some of the music is so catchy that it's hard not to stop and take it in, such as when the groove really gets going in the upbeat "Petrichor" remix.

Then again I already have a bit of a bias towards more ambient, minimal electronic music (well, and extreme stuff on the other side of the spectrum too), but I think my appreciation of On Acid is well-founded. It's a great album, and just another reminder that there's so much more I need to be looking into.

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