[markant

markant - "vice versa"

markant has followed up the excellent infam with his first honest-to-god full length cd, and we find the distance between carsten endraß and autechre growing with successive releases by each act. this may be because æ have redefined themselves with every album and ep while markant has been using envane as a stable reference since, like, 1997, but whatever. it's still pretty good, if a bit familiar, when taken in measured doses.

endraß's sound is specific enough to sound almost monotonous over time, making the ideal markant/lautwandel release a four-song 12" or ep. while any seventy minute cd can be an arduous affair, vice versa, a collection of decent, long, very similar tracks, is downright ponderous at times. played in a random mix with other artists, it's obvious that markant's got a lot more going for him than the host of other acts doing the crunchy, melancholic idm thing, but you can only coast on being better than the competition in a genre of diminishing returns for so long. with some ambition and the will to mix things up a bit, markant could jump to the head of the intelligent techno pack. with vice versa, he appears to be content to run in place. again.

for more information, please visit markant records.

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