Blond

Kompakt's second release is from Dettinger, who turns in one of the label's best 12"s. Each of the four tracks is untitled; none seem to be tied to one another in any strict sense, but when one of them showed up on the Total 1 compilation, it was titled "Blond." (This type of thing would become a common Kompakt practice.) The first track is Dettinger at his most straight-ahead dance-oriented, with a quickened 4/4 basis nearly mired in similarly paced swarming effects. The following A-side track is what some journalists would call "heroin house"; it's somewhere between Boards of Canada and Basic Channel, an eerie memory soundtrack with a fluid pumping rhythm. Neither of the tracks on the flip -- another amniotic techno burner and a more alien ambient track, the latter of which forecasts the Intershop full-length -- match up to the standard of the A-side, though they shouldn't be completely bypassed.