Review: Enderie – Tape 1

The rhythm persists. Despite the clangs of construction work just outside the window; despite an obnoxiously loud television pushing muffled voices through the wall; despite the dangerous wiring the causes synthesiser electricity to jump and skip as the voltage lurches around the circuit. Central to Tape 1 is a sense of “keeping on”, pressing through the familiar obstructions of noise pollution and eternal scaffolding, of harsh luck adversities and head-squeezing early starts – the beats keep their head down and drive forward, eroded slightly by the counter-current of life’s unwanted debris, yet doggedly persistent in its forward drive. The experience is rife with noises that clatter against the underlying tempo, or mercilessly smother those central synthesiser refrains. The hiss of another pipe bursting. The lurch of a washing machine on the blink.

Yet Enderie wears this jacket of interference with a wry pleasure, flaunting those tassels of masking tape and perishing seams, taking ownership of the very soundscape that conspires to shut him down. Sometimes this is more explicit – the metallic impacts on “Sore” arranged over the downbeats, turned from visceral intrusion to emphasis device – yet there comes a point when even those spews of mangled voices and electronic gunk start to feel utterly satisfying and alive, finding their own rhythms of accident and liberation amidst the monotonised routines of society. In light of this new understanding, tracks like the opening “Let Systems Decide (A Laser Beam)” become anthemic, hurtling forth like an overfilled dumpster truck of junk instruments and household appliances and a vague inclination of what techno sounds like, littered with tiny pieces of circuit board and shrapnel, with the whole pile leaping upward in glorious synchronicity with every speed bump and pothole. An exquisite mess.