Pleasurehorse - Bareskinrug
(Load)
Pleasurehorse is a one-man electronic machine, and a burst of rank, sweaty air into the electronic music community. His arrhythmic compositions are beat-based, but their thuds come at random, jarring the listener, and, often, the rest of the music. Though the sounds he uses will sound fairly familiar to any listener of current "experimental" electronic music, and even more pedestrian drum & bass and breakbeat, Pleasurehorse throws them down in seemingly random sequence, rarely pausing to allow a motif to repeat itself before a heavy bass beat interrupts and sends the music into frantic turmoil. When Bareskinrug does dwell more in rhythm, though severely stunted and unpredictable rhythm, things begin to become laborious, but usually there's a chopped-up spasm of snap, crackle, and pop waiting just around the corner. At his best, Pleasurehorse can sound like a beefed-up, testosterone-ridden mutation of Ryoji Ikeda's Fragments work, but there are many times at which its as if Pleasurehorse has forgotten his closest ally, the sense of surprise, and he allows his creations, however twisted and ugly, to become stagnant.
I applaud Pleasurehorse for his addition to the electronic music scene in a time when solemnity, understatement, and, most of all, quiet, have become a major part of the standard formula for the creation of anything experimental. His bombastic style counterbalances well the glut of glitchy click 'n' cut that, however deserving, owns far too large a portion of the market when it comes to new ground in electronics. Though Bareskinrug could benefit from a more varied battery of sounds and technique, it offers an energy and turbulence that, though present in a good deal of his contemporaries' music, are restrained by the serious tone that drapes over even much of the seemingly flippant electronic music of today.
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