Zen Sounds 052: Rezzett
Zen Sounds 052: Rezzett
A surprise album from the experimental electronic duo after five years of almost-silence
Prologue
Last weekend, I drove to Hamburg for the Gondwana night at Elbphilharmonie. Saxophonist Jasmine Myra and her band brought their modern spiritual jazz to the stage, Danish duo Svaneborg Kardyb wove intricate ambient soundscapes, and Mammal Hands proved their status as contemporary jazz’s most intense performers. The rest of the week, I spent with a friend in Amsterdam, strolling along town canals, listening to rap music and enjoying some of the best food and coffee the city has on offer.
Speaking about rap, 2023 is shaping up to be a great year for the genre. »The Great Escape« by Larry June and The Alchemist is finally out, Navy Blue just released his exciting new album »Ways Of Knowing«, and one of my favorite MCs, billy woods, has announced his new record »Maps«, a sequel to »Hiding Places«, his superb 2019 collaboration album with producer Kenny Segal. woods also curated the exclusive compilation/mixtape »High Bias«, which draws a line of lineage from present-day avant-garde rapper Fatboi Sharif to 1990’s underground hero Breezly Brewin of The Juggaknots. I do feel we’re living through a second golden age of independent, experimental hip-hop.
On my way home from Amsterdam, I learned through Shawn Reynaldo’s »First Floor« newsletter, which has become my premier source for electronic music criticism, that Rezzett are back. In my book, that’s as exciting as a new release from Burial or Actress – they’re among my favorite producers of deconstructionist UK club music, and their output has lately been so sparse that I believed they’d probably put the project on indefinite hiatus. Luckily, I was wrong.
Rezzett – »Meant Like This«
(The Trilogy Tapes, 2023)
I remember when I first heard a Rezzett tune. It was ten years ago, while watching a promo video from a small, London-based underground skateboarding company called Palace. The broken techno of »Yayla« matched the glitchy VHS-style footage perfectly. I found the track on Rezzett’s self-titled debut EP, a collage of pounding lo-fi beats, murky synth sounds and loads of tape hiss. In a glowing review for a German music magazine, I wrote that it sounded »as if Autechre had locked themselves in Madlib’s old bomb shelter, smoked his weekly marihuana dose and went through a crate of old 12-inches from 1980’s Detroit«.
Over the course of the next years, Rezzett released several vinyl EPs on UK independent label The Trilogy Tapes. All of them were good. Still, they remained a mystery. Nobody seemed to know who they were – no photos existed, no interviews were given, and when they (rarely) played live, at some fashion show in Tokyo or in a dark cellar in Manchester, the two figures behind the decks were drowned in black light and smoke. After a few years it was revealed that the producers behind Rezzett were actually Lukid and Tapes, who had both started out in the London experimental electronic scene of the late 2000’s.
DJ and art director Will Bankhead had launched his blog The Trilogy Tapes in 2008, covering leftfield techno and house, as well as dub, noise and drone music. It morphed into a cassette label soon, pre-dating the global lo-fi house trend that arose around the mid 2010’s and made analog-sounding, sample-based dance music quite popular on the club circuit. Rezzett and TTT may have utilized a similar aesthetic, but their vision expands well beyond sun-bleached poolside disco tunes made with plug-ins and filters emulating analog hardware.
Rezzett’s music has been called outsider house or wonky techno. It was always dark and euphoric and a bit dangerous. When they released their self-titled debut album in 2018, they had been on an active schedule for five consecutive years, creating a whole universe around their off-kilter beats, ambient noise and hardcore rave references. They worked with fellow UK club deconstructionist Zomby and remixed artists as diverse as Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and Norwegian avant-garde saxophonist Bendik Giske. Then they fell silent, even though both artists remained active as solo producers and remixers.
Last week, they finally broke that silence. In June 2022, they had previewed some of the new material on a radio show on Rinse France. Now The Trilogy Tapes celebrated their catalogue number 100 with a second full-length record from the British production duo. After five years of no new music at all, it’s just such a relief to be catapulted right back into their universe. »Meant Like This« is a chaotic collage of distorted samples, blown-out synths, jungle basslines and ecstatic, stuttering drums. And while sounding totally strange and dusty, it’s also so much fun. »It’s messy and weird, but it works«, Shawn Reynaldo writes, and I want to slightly adjust the sentence: It’s messy and weird, and it works. No contradiction to be found here.
Similar to their first album, Rezzett are mixing in more ambient-leaning styles with their explorations of leftfield techno and abstract jungle. Shorter tracks like »The Goblin Has Fallen In Love«, »Chirrup« and »Vivz Portal« sound like parts of hazy ambient techno sets recorded 30 years ago in chill-out rooms, handed down from former ravers to younger siblings on hand-copied tapes. Like with some of the music on Russian electronic label Gost Zvuk, every single element here sounds warped and distorted beyond recognition, coming straight out of 8-bit samplers and 1980’s drum machines like the Casio RZ-1.
On »Meant Like This«, Rezzett manage to capture that early-morning euphoria that older ravers may remember, even if they’ve stopped going out actively. Their music makes me think of the legions of hobbyist producers building jungle tunes on Commodore Amiga computers, only to become car mechanics or teachers or insurance company workers, showing off their Metalheadz tattoo when traveling to Sardinia for a summer festival. Burial is another artist that heavily references that transitory, ephemeral aspect of nightlife culture – it’s a period in many people’s lives, for some a very important one, but one day it’s over, just like everything fun and beautiful and pretty will have to cease.
These thoughts don’t even make me sad, just slightly melancholic, and Rezzett’s music doesn’t exhaust itself in any kind of teary-eyed retro vibe. It’s more about recontextualizing the interesting aspects of older club music. These tunes still bear audible traces of their origins, but they’re clearly more suitable for noise-canceling headphones than Berghain’s main floor.
I am reminded of an Autechre interview, talking about those weekend nights where you didn’t end up going out. Maybe you didn’t feel like socializing with a room full of sweaty strangers because you smoked a little too much, or you simply were a heavy introvert like me. Either way, you stayed at home with your friends, listened to tunes, zoned out and played video games. I would like to imagine that Autechre and their friends from Rochdale might have enjoyed this album on one of those nights.
Happy weekend!
© 2023 Stephan Kunze