Italian producer Lorenzo Senni has released his new album Scacco Matto today on Warp Records. The project builds and refines on what has been a career taking tropes of dance music and exaggerating them to the point of near comedy. He comes from a background outside of dance music applying his own musical upbringing in hardcore and punk with an outsiders interest in club culture. His early electronic music was camp and trashy — a guilty pleasure you put on when you thought when no was listening. You might dare to sneak a track in when with friends to see if you could convert someone but you rarely had the balls to do it.
His new album tones down the hardcore and trashing elements of his music and moves with more melodic nuance. That is isn’t to say it isn’t still camp, a bit wacky and a bit mental. You have to be a bit mental to enjoy this stuff. Good thing I am a lot of a bit mental (a pre-req for this job).
The terms that are often associated with his music have been "deconstructed trance," "rave-voyeurism" and even "circumscribed euphoria. with big melodies taken apart and put back together in seemingly the wrong way. His songs don’t take themselves seriously with warbled synth lines fluttering around each other without any bass or kick drums to lead the songs along. They play with tension and release without any obvious release or drop. Synths can often add rhythmic patterns and structure to songs like the steady progression on “Dance Tonight Revolution Tomorrow.”
Some of the songs can be glitchier and more on the edge of experimental like “Move In Silence.” However some are more melodic and relaxed like “Canone Infinito.”
This album is on the verge of headache inducing, but in the best way, if that makes any sense. It is like a vintage Nintendo game soundtrack took a fuckton of drugs and got lost in dark parts of a club. Since the world has gone mad, listen to this album doing whatever you goddamn please (indoors of course) and get copy here.
