The Director’s Cut: Rico Puestel – #technohasleftthebuilding [Exhibition]

Revered artist Rico Puestel presents his latest album, #technohasleftthebuilding. The title and the album are a reaction to what Puestel sees as the collapse of the techno world as he knows it. He feels its spirit and cultural impact has been watered down to the point of meaninglessness, at least for him, and says “There is nothing left to tell.”

The German producer, live-act, DJ and label owner has released plenty of seminal tracks on the underground’s most influential outlets and adds that “the self-consuming scene has reached its grotesque climax and left an empty shell of something once filled with so much passion, warmth, strength, heart and hope. The times just haven’t changed – they lost their self-fulfilling purpose and authenticity.”

For one final time now, Rico has gathered all his experiences & emotions together and poured them all into this heartfelt love letter to the ashes of the genre he once loved. The whole thing was crafted in one 12-hour session in which he relived his most deeply rooted techno moments. As the track titles count down to zero in Esperanto, Rico finds his own inner peace and balance before finally bowing out.

The album kicks off with unrelenting dark techno funk and never lets up from there. It is rooted in classic sounds that layer up raw synths and rusty metal surfaces with potent drum programming. Every single one is carefully arranged and ever-evolving to keep dance floors on the move as Puestel brings in subtle peaks and troughs of emotion through his synth work. Some are dark and heads down like ‘du’, others like ‘kvin’ are more bright and light with uplifting melodies. ‘nulo’ twists synths into contorted, brain-frying forms, and ‘sep’ will zone out any dance floor with its more sleek and minimal styles. All in all, this is a superb snapshot of the innovative and artful techno that Puestel has always dealt with.

If this is to be a final farewell, #technohasleftthebuilding is a remarkable way to go out.

How to listen: There are a couple of ways to proceed. First, you can listen to the whole album, which you will find below, and then read the notes. Or, read the notes as you listen to each track. This will completely change your perspective on the whole release itself and bring you closer to the artist and their work.

dek

The bleak robotic prelude “What once was, is now without form and void. I left. Everybody left. Techno has left the building.” presages what’s going to be enacted: A strenghtful, merciless technological plasma flow into space with forces defying gravity. The journey starts here und won’t let go on the way…

naŭ

“naŭ” (= nine / 9) defines completion and conception at once. There’s a prophetic secret embedded in this amalgam of polyrhythmic movement. Can you divine?

ok

Remembering the most primal origins of tribal music thousands of years ago, dissected by a mysterious and individually relatable voice that scrutinizes the state of the human species nowadays. “ok” (“eight”) is the infinite number, but it’s just the harbinger and the “idea” of infinity. A further guidance towards “sep”…

sep

“sep” is a hypnosis ad infinitum. A redundant, subtly ever-changing structure (based on interfering 303 layers) that shall pursue eternity. The tribal characteristic from “ok” closely echoes here.

ses

A kind of transfer piece into the second half of the album that trailblazes and anticipates what’s going to happen soundwise, delivering a different perspective and clearer approach.

kvin

Back to the tribal ideas of “ok”, “kvin” holds an altered and more plain outlook on Techno itself, additionally introducing one measure of chime and syrinx. I always felt a magic to the combination of the numbers “8” (“ok”) and “5” (“kvin”), adding up to “13” – that’s why I placed these two connected pieces right in their place.

kvar

Originally based on a short Hawaiian steel drum theme I’ve designed before, “kvar” became a very dark and headstrong affair after some tonal modulation and manipulation. That’s exactly the spirit when it came to Techno: Research and creativity within the realms of technology lead to unique results that just can’t be achieved without this distinct spirit of discovery.

tri

The tri-nity of rigour, groove and friskiness gets to the point and involves the only close tritone theme, unfurling the more diabolical characteristics of Techno itself.

du

Throughout the last breaths of the album, “du” is more of an ironic statement on the current affair of Techno and Trance nostalgia that contains several cross-references throughout those origins in the 1990s.

unu

Finally, having reached number one (“unu”), the 303 is called into action again and conceptually merges the track numbers “unu” and “sep”, adding up to the infinity number “8” (“ok”). Besides being infinite again, “unu” holds the singularity of the only comprehensible human vocals on the album whispering “END YOU HERE?” within the break – a message speaking for itself.

nulo

The unexpected ending. The number that is most often forgotten: Zero. “nulo” is a mantra groove that shall go on forever. It’s the only “slower” track on the album, cut inside-out together with “du” and “unu”, ending on the outer groove as an infinite loop vinyl that actually never ends until electricity or more might collapse. Inversion takes things back to the beginning – the initial idea of “nine/naŭ”. The “nine” will be important. Don’t forget the “ten”…