On his freshly-released ‘Contact‘ EP, Florian Kupfer opens our ears to the sound of spaced-out pianos, reminiscent of his early works. The second you drop the needle on the groove you are hypnotised and taken into a vortex, which grows groovier as you progress across Florian’s sun-streaked landscapes and melancholic airs. Then, right in the middle, Kupfer veers off; beefing up the bass as the melody continues to flow, showing more of an imperative sense.
Seamlessly the German producer orchestrates a millefeuille of layers, finely tuned into a sound that you’d want to hear in the opening stage of any club set. Each stratum of sound dialogues with one another beautifully, slowly fusing into a complex, but harmonic experience.
The title-cut itself may be no peak-time banger, but it sure gets you on levitation mode effortlessly. Meanwhile the rest of the EP consists of curious off-road explorations. A2 serves up rough textures: engrossed, echoing and rife with weird bleeping sounds that evoke the heartbeat of an entity about to transcend into a new dimension.’TY‘ sure has potential to give its listener goosebumps, but ends too soon to unfold completely.
B1 then moves further into chimey territories, entangling bells in an echoing dialogue as a heavy bass and proper techno features begin to resound. Here the openness and the space offered by the A-side are taken away completely. Instead we are drawn deep down a more isolated, metallic and disturbing realm, and that’s where ‘Z‘ comes in. Techno textures, similar in roughness, bring up the rear as drums fade away, like mumbled quotes, in the hazy beauty of distant sounds.
Through such a misty atmosphere, Kupfer creates a unique and disorienting sense of spatialisation, in which we find ourselves hard to locate; using this narrative, supported by an oddball bass line, across the entire track. The synth-laden melody loops the loop with the opening track, translating the myth of space into a much more down-to-earth mythology of sound. As a whole, the EP undoubtedly is a fitting release for L.I.E.S. – rough, unfinished and daring. ‘Contact‘ might be the easiest track to digest, but it is ‘Z‘’s exploration of approximation, that digs the deeper here.
Contact is released via L.I.E.S. on 7th November 2017, order a copy from Juno.
TRACKLIST
A1. Contact
A2. TY
B1. Random Chaos
B2. Z
Discover more about Florian Kupfer and L.I.E.S. on Inverted Audio.