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Tech

Answer Code Request, 'Code': Techno Discovers a Whole New Algorithm

Drum and bass music created in exile.
Image: Valerie Haase

You might flip through an Answer Code Request track without quite thinking about it, hearing some familiar sounds and rhythms in more or less their correct techno positions. It takes more than a passing glance, however, to hear what's happening, to catch the fundamental rewiring at the root of Patrick Gräser's music as ACR. Repeated listens to his just-released LP Code give up something that isn't post-techno or post- any genre, just because it never really bothered with genre rules enough to be breaking them. It's like he's creating the same general sorts of music, flashing with quite real reflections of "proper" techno, bass music, and ambiance, but under an entirely different, alien system—or algorithm.

It's as if you gave Gräser all the right sounds and a couple of good paragraphsdescribing several decades of electronic dance music (the best parts) and told him to just go and make it, however. It might sound something like Code. Or maybe just ignore all of my bullshit and feast on drum and bass music as created in exile.