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(2022) Terrence Dixon - Other Dimensions LP
Review:
For an artist as prominent and influential as Terrence Dixon, his music is, in many ways, profoundly strange. Few producers live up to the futuristic vision of Detroit techno like he does, making record after record of unsettling, out-there loops with just a few elements. It’s the kind of music you might imagine aliens, or people several hundreds years from now, listening to: supremely abstract, stripped-back, made mostly of bleeps and bloops. Despite its cold touch, there’s always been an uncommon soul to Dixon’s work, a quality that shines through even his reduced music. That came out a little more on last year’s surprisingly emotional Reporting from Detroit, which touched down from space to survey his hometown. On Other Dimensions, Dixon’s ninth full-length, he launches back into orbit and encounters something like a black hole. Split evenly between avant-garde techno and dark ambient, this is one of the most foreboding and immersive records of his long and storied career. The human element is as far as off as it’s ever been. Other Dimensions starts off with some glorious Terrence Dixon techno: hard-panned melodic leads and the most bone-chilling gusts of wind you’ve ever heard, a blast of digital ice. But it’s the second track “Aurora” that really captures Dixon’s genius. In any other producer’s hands, “Aurora,” with its scribbling organ lead that skates and stumbles over the lumbering kick drum, might sound like a mess. The harmonics are unsettling, if not just straight-up confusing. All the elements appear to move at different speeds. The effect is disorienting but riveting, like being pulled through changing gravity fields, the spacetime-continuum ripping before your very ears. If there’s a hit here, it’s probably “Final Results,” whose urgent FM synths and hypnotic kick-bassline interplay offer a sense of forward movement amidst all the topsy-turviness. It might be one of Dixon’s best techno tracks in recent memory. But techno it doesn’t feel like the main attraction here, at least not for me. After five banner Dixon tracks, Other Dimensions flips the switch into ambient music, a dark, cavernous, empty sort of ambient that comes off more creepy than relaxing. The easiest comparison would be Lustmord, but just like with his techno, Dixon’s touch here makes even these drones feel unusual, touched by something unique. If the first half of the album is hurtling through space, then side two is adrift in the void, nothing around you but pitch-black and the sounds of your own body. There are cinematic flourishes here and there—ominous brass on “Small Discovery,” choral vocal pads on “Briliiant Rotation”—that nod to classic sci-fi tropes, but for the most part, the music is unforgiving and bleak. Paired with the trippy, sometimes scary techno of the A-side, Other Dimensions is a peek into the abyss. This is what happens when you take techno to its logical conclusion: the whirr and hum of machines. It’s easy to fall into space travel clichés when talking about Dixon’s music (hell, he encourages it), but you don’t need to close your eyes and imagine a Star Wars spacescape to appreciate Other Dimensions. Its appeal is in its brutal honesty, in the way it hides nothing. In a discography of mind-bending techno, this is one of Dixon’s most eye-opening and perversely satisfying releases, precisely because of how little it gives you. — Resident Advisor
Track List:
01.A1. Cosmic Storms 04:40
02.A2. Aurora 05:23
03.A3. Mystical Journey 03:53
04.A4. Final Results 05:39
05.The Meeting 04:17
06.B1. Elliptical Orbit 02:46
07.B2. Small Discovery 04:43
08.B3. Brilliant Rotation 06:17
09.B4. Other Dimensions 05:02
10.B5. Yesterday's World 06:40
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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