Efdemin
Mirror Phase
Dekmantel UFO Series
Honest question: When was the last time that Efdemin released a bad record, or even a mediocre one? The German techno veteran has long been one of the genre’s most reliable talents, and though he tends to maintain a relatively low profile, the sheer quality of his output speaks loud and clear.
Mirror Phase is his debut outing on Dekmantel’s UFO Series imprint, and in contrast to last year’s POLY album, which charted a heady course as it oscillated between club-ready sounds and more headphone-oriented fare, this new EP is a taut and explicitly floor-focused effort. The drums ride high in the mix, the rhythms are sturdy and they move with a sense of purpose.
Efedmin conceptualized Mirror Phase as a sort of love letter to techno, and the genre’s longstanding exchange between Detroit and Berlin in particular. On the record’s steadily bubbling title track (which opens the EP), he even enlists the voice of Motor City icon DJ Minx, pulling a sample of the spoken-word intro she contributed to Kevin Saunderson’s X-Mix back in 1997. Her celestial words—which quite literally speak of “ascension,” “transformation,” “transition” and “teleportation”—pair beautifully with the song’s delicate strings and rippling chords, tapping into the uniquely interdimensional spirit of Detroit dance music.
With its floaty atmospherics and rubbery grooves, “Unity Grain” exudes a similarly space-age feel, harkening back to Red Planet and other projects from the more buoyant corners of the UR catalog. “FS1R” and “Slip,” however, have a bit more edge; the former outfits its insistent thump with a myriad of unintelligibly tweaked and twisted vocal clips, while the latter is adorned with crunchy synths that jump around like a downed power line. Efdemin may be known as one of techno’s more thoughtful purveyors, but he clearly still knows how to bang it out, and while Mirror Phase was inspired by the founders who came before him, its creator is someone who also sits in rarefied air.