Theorem: THX: Experiments In Synchronicity

Techno is usually discussed in terms of rhythm, but the trait that has always set the genre's seminal Detroit practitioners apart from their more ordinary followers is a shared devotion to all-encompassing musicality. Going back to the simulated orchestra swells and virtuoso piano rolls of classics like Derrick May's Strings Of Life, Detroit techno developed into an art form armed with fully developed aesthetic values that reach far beyond the dance-centric staples of beats and bass. X-103's Atlantis features its fair share of manic rhythmic rush, but it also offers an astonishing lesson in the way techno's scabrous tempos emerge as natural byproducts of soundscapes too often treated as background decoration. A 1993 classic now given its first full-scale domestic release, Atlantis sends X-103—a duo composed of Detroit legends Jeff Mills and Robert Hood—on a spiraling descent toward the mythic city beneath the sea. The album dives headlong into a sturdy dance track, but the beats in "Atlantis (The Entrance)" serve mostly as an extension of the densely songful ambient wash sloshing around the foreground. Stoked by the woozy sounds of warping metal and racing jet streams, a banging four-four snare roll sounds less like a driving force than a logical conclusion. Likewise, the hesitant snare cracks in "Acropolis" take their cues from a hook-rich electro riff, falling in line like a horn stab that marks both a rhythmic signpost and a melodic culmination in a mathematically concise funk song. Cycling through 16 tracks that range from brooding dance-floor anthems to disarmingly deep ambient meditations, X-103 shows how the best techno slaps down the perceived hierarchy between melody and rhythm by employing each in the service of the other. More than that, though, the nine-year-old Atlantis still stands as one of techno's most fully realized album-length visions, not to mention one of the most novelistic works of sonic fiction yet set to tape. Latter-day Detroit producer Theorem sets his sights decidedly lower on THX: Experiments In Synchronicity, a severely reduced but similarly melodic example of the minimal techno favored by Richie Hawtin's boutique label, Minus. A collaborative project enlisting tech-house acts Sutekh, Stewart Walker, and Swayzak, THX fixes clicky rhythms to sparse musical coverings that quiver like sheets hung in a barely blowing breeze. "Recoil" circles a metallic yawn around a gulping, near-hummable bassline, while tracks like "Break In At Apt 205" and "Mitochondria" throb with the studiously muted four-four thump that serves as techno's calling card. A fair amount of THX tends toward blandly naked minimalism, but when he slathers the template with luscious micro-grooves on "Too Distant Images" and "Devil Of Rotations," Theorem tracks down the kind of songfulness that can lurk in even the most concentrated dance music.