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Monday
Oct102011

Legowelt - The Teac Life

Legowelt

Everybody likes a good moan and Danny Wolfers certainly doesn’t hold back in a diatribe against boring ‘pretentious douchebag’ techno producers that accompanies this free download (although donations are welcome to repair his broken Juno 106: it couldn’t handle the deepness of the album apparently and broke during the making of it). Wolfers’ ultra-kitsch geocities-style website tells you that this is a man who cares little for style and a lot for substance with downloads jostling for space with synthesiser & studio features. The fourteen tracks here are no-nonsense analogue jams recorded on to the eponymous Teac VHX tape deck that gives the album a grimy aural texture at odds to the contemporary sheen that he rails against.

Music-wise, it’s an unmistakably Legowelt affair with ‘The Soul of a City’ on a house tip while ‘Moonmist’s plethora of synthesised strings layer up to a climactic end. ‘Forest Conditioner’ is Underground Resistance as if beamed from outer space and picked up on an AM transistor. The introduction of a snare drum at the half way point breaks the reverie of the chiming synths and gives it another layer of energy and is an album highlight. ‘Dare to Dream’ clocks in at over 12 minutes and feels it while closer ‘U Can Fly Away from the Hood’ has plenty of great ideas including a female vocal hook but again, Wolfers’ general disregard for brevity on this album makes it into a drawn out affair when there’s a great 4 minute single crying to be let loose.

A common moan for many music fans is that free downloads rarely meet the standard of an artist’s purchasable releases. These releases often betray a sense of laziness with Omar-S’ recent sponsored EP being an obvious culprit. While this might be ‘raw as fuck’ and contain its fair share of filler, it stands up to a lot of Wolfers’ past releases and that’s an accolade in itself. At 110 minutes in length, it’s a mammoth listen and is often at times to its detriment; with some pruning & more diligent editing there would be the making of an excellent album here. As it is, this is an often challenging listen but given Wolfers’ primordial manifesto, one can’t help but feel it would be a disappointment if it wasn’t.

Paul Fanning

Reader Comments (3)

"The TEAC Life"

October 10, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterFart Face

110 minutes of pure FREE deepness. It's the best electronic album of this year IMHO. Thanks Legowelt. And please press it on Vinyl.

October 10, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterSpaniard

Apparently it is getting a vinyl release across a few slabs on a new label from the man himself

December 3, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterNOT LEGOWELT

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