"With his confident, deft approach to production and sound design, Phillip Sollmann has unleashed his best work as Efdemin. ‘Poly’ is engaging, mesmerising, and an easy contender for one of the best techno albums of the year."
The saying “bigger is better” seems apt for the current moment of electronic music. Producers and streaming platforms compete for and, in the case of the latter, manipulate our attention with influencer bait and AI-generated content. There is often more consideration paid to a producer’s social media presence than there is on the actual music they release.
Perhaps it’s the post-Covid energy rush that’s brought progressive house, jungle, and even gabber back into the public consciousness. It could also be that bass-thumping drops work well for the TikTok attention spans. Lost in the shuffle are artists working outside of the PR hustle, who are low key in their public personas and let their productions speak for themselves.
Nuance and subtlety are scarce commodities, and ones in which Berlin-based producer Phillip Sollmann revels. Across a discography that can just as easily morph into chilly deep house as it can experimental patterns, Sollmann is a resident Berghain DJ with LPs on Dial and the Berlin club’s Ostgut Ton imprint, to name a few. As his studio set up would indicate, he’s a student of sound and the ways it can make us move and think.
After a six year absence, he returns to the Efdemin moniker, and a revived Ostgut Ton, with ‘Poly’. As with previous records, Sollmann runs adjacent to sounds of inspiration rather than attempting to create a copy. Take 2010’s ‘Chicago’, where he applied a Chicago House template to his production, merging that city’s deep musical history with the cool, calculated textures of Berlin. His previous Efdemin full-length, ‘New Atlantis’, was an ambitious fusion of electronica and avant-garde minimalism. ‘Poly’ retains elements of that exploratory mindset with a multi-faceted exploration of micro-tonal sounds, polyrhythms, and grooving techno and house.
The album builds and flows like a DJ set, ramping up the energy from the opening cacophony of “Drift” that brings in unsettled vocal samples, crisp beats, and atmospheric synths. The rhythms of “Trophic Cascade” echo from wall to wall, showcasing an ace minimal dance sound that’s infectious in its simplicity. ‘Poly’ builds to higher BPMs while maintaining a claustrophobic mood, with the centerpiece being the stunning sci-fi techno of “Microphase”. Its hypnotic, saturated production rumbles like an earthquake.
While ‘Poly’ is rooted in the techno sphere, a handful of tracks act as an expert synthesis of the academic side of Efdemin’s production with his clubbier instincts honed behind the decks. Opening with live cymbal rides that quickly mutate back and forth between synths and electronic percussion, the title track is a headphone brain melter that utilizes all the speaker space to send sounds bouncing and rattling throughout the mix.
The closer “Below the Surface” is a fitting coda to the album. Reverb-dripped synths and industrial percussive snaps lend the track a downtempo mood, hastening the listener from the unity of the club out into a disorienting return to reality.
Effortlessly melding strands of experimental sonics with club-ready beats, Efdemin used the intervening years refining his approach to the studio and studying the functional applications of his sounds to the late night and early morning party crowds. With his confident, deft approach to production and sound design, Phillip Sollmann has unleashed his best work as Efdemin. ‘Poly’ is engaging, mesmerising, and an easy contender for one of the best techno albums of the year.
‘Poly’ is out now via Ostgut Ton. Buy vinyl from Inverted Audio Record Store.
TRACKLIST
1. Drift
2. Poly
3. Signal to Noise
4. Rauris
5. Trophic Cascade
6. Aachen
7. Microphase
8. Radical Hope
9. Irrlicht
10. Lost Somewhere in the Day
11. Below the Surface