I is the Chilean duo's first full-length release in four years and marks a drastic change in the process behind their delay-drenched, motorik grooves.
Domingae and Diego recorded their previous albums in single takes with a full band, but they recorded I over three months as more than 60 separate stems. Producer Atom received these stems - guitars, bass, drums, synthesisers and vocals - organised into four sequences, with no other directions. He had free reign over how to put them back together again.
The result was two 13-minute tracks and two 17-minute tracks. That's long even by Föllakzoid's standards, and particularly surprising if you know Atom through the electropop pastiche of his most famous album, HD.
[The album's] repetitions simply suck you into their own dimension
But Atom is a diverse and prolific artist, and aficionados will recall his 2014 Ground Loop EP, two cuts of hypnotic acid techno, both over ten minutes long. It's hard not to think back to Ground Loop when listening to I. Both records build tension masterfully, but where Ground Loops' structure is beholden to the rises and falls of a peak-time dancefloor, I's repetitions simply suck you into their own dimension.
There is more than a hint of techno to the final arrangement, but it's kept subtle. The kick mostly stays low in the mix, with warm pulses of bass guitar pushing the rhythm along instead. The most exciting moment of the record, however, is 11:30 into 'III', when an insistent EBM march emerges from the murk before sinking back into kosmische oscillations.
Michael Hobson
