Answer Code Request – Code

Label: Ostgut TonRelease: 9th June 2014

If you’re familiar with the work of Answer Code Request, you’ll already know that the Berlin based producer has a unique ability for crafting wonderfully atmospheric techno. Putting out records under the ACR guise since 2011, Berghain resident Patrick Gräser has earned a reputation for being one of the most exciting, interesting and refreshing techno artists working in the German capital. The Breathe EP for Ostgut Ton earlier this year exemplified Gräser’s appeal: his ability to fuse charismatic synth sounds and idiosyncratic rhythms whilst keep the kicks tight and unrelenting is what has paved the way for tracks such as ‘The 4th Verdict’ to become some of the biggest techno weapons currently in circulation. It’s stark and functional techno music but without the austerity (and dare we say, monotony) that those terms usually suggest. 

As such, it’s not surprising that expectations were riding high when Gräser announced earlier this year that he would be releasing his debut album. Thankfully, it’s a record that not only lives up to ACR’s discography, but presents another dimension to Gräser’s talent. Rather than being an extended collection of the all-out peak time techno tracks that you might expect to hear on one of ACR’s EPs, Code is an album that takes advantage of its longer running time for a broader, more satisfying experience and which tentatively explores the frontiers of Gräser’s established sound, dipping its toes into IDM and ambient aesthetics.  

Eponymously titled album opener ‘Code’, with its warm crackles, monochrome synths and what sounds as if it could be a sample of rocket-launch transmission dialogue, is an ambient inauguration of the album’s and epitomizes one of the album’s enduring qualities: an incredible attentiveness to sound-design. The brooding mood is continued into the rarefied bassline and bleak percussion of ‘Blue Russian’, a techno ying to the ambient yang of its predecessor, and establishing a pattern that runs throughout the album in which gentle, occasionally beatless tracks are sandwiched between kicking and jerking techno compositions. 

It’s an approach that works wonders. On ‘Field Depth’, the bass drum (which sounds something like what you might imagine Leftfield having programmed if they had come from Berlin) and the haunting, reverb-laden synths segue wonderfully into the glacial synths and slowed-down industrial clicks of ‘Odyssey Sequence’. Both ‘Status’ and ‘Zenith’ take equally innovative approaches, splicing crisp, expansive techno kicks with a synth melodies that hark back to early ‘90s Aphex Twin. 

In fact, the only quibble to be made is that at times Gräser’s tracks are so embedded in influences from techno’s past, that it sometimes becomes easy to overlook the innovative elements at work within them. If previous ACR releases hinted towards Gräser’s veneration for techno from Detroit and London in the early nineties, then Code is much more explicit with its audible footnotes. ‘Relay Access’ with its ambient synths and warm percussion sounds like the kind of track you might have found on a Warp compilation circa 1993 (albeit, with a smoothness afforded by modern production). That’s not a bad thing in itself, but over the course of a 50 minute, the constant reference to the tropes and signatures of a by-gone age become a minor distraction. 

But, it’s a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic album and one which sustains itself right until the closing the moments. ‘Spin Off’ is a wonderful, beatless sci-fi experimentation in which expansive snyths sound like a droning automaton choir. Whilst ‘Axif’ , the album’s single vocal track, is a spine-tingling collaboration with Elizabeth Bernholz (aka Gazelle Twin) in which Bernholz’s impressive voice floats atop a submerged bassline and an icy melody. Album closer ‘Thermal Capacity’ finishes the record in style: a six-minute long IDM jam of shifting rhythms, a shimmering, almost spiritual, synth and a looping kick drum all make for a finale that is fittingly memorable. 

Code offers a much broader and, at times, introspective snapshot of ACR than we’ve heard from him so far. It is a record that both sounds like a debut, in that it feels like someone announcing themselves and their intent, but which in its surety and its incredibly accomplished sound design, sounds like anything but a debut. Confirming Gräser as a figure with that rare ability to create the kind of techno that has functionality but also a soulfulness that allows it to transcend a club context, Code is an impressive first album from a figure who is already well on their way to becoming techno’s next big thing.