Selectone’s Dead Grooves

Published August, 2014
by Ondřej Parus

More than a year after the EP of the Foma duo, the Czech electronic label Ressonus, which usually does so on a sporadic basis though always accompanied with carefully prepared limited edition CD and download artefacts, announced a new release. Coinciding with the straightforward techno-industrial record of the American project The Agromaniac, which was inspired by Harlan Ellison’s post-apocalyptic novella “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, is also the new material of Selectone, a project of the label head David Rambousek, whose history dates back to 2004 and the Mufonic imprint.

Rhizomatic Sounds came out as a split with Neutrino and together with the following Czech-Slovak anthology Out Of Place Artefacts vol. I could be seen as a statement against the dance scene in favour of dirty and fragmented experimenting. “I prefer working with atmospheres and emotions to stylish sounds. I try to breathe life and an inner dimension into music.(…) I like sonic impurities, lo-fi and wasteland electronics, confronted with subtle moodscapes, created on synths or acoustic instruments. I sample a lot – from purely natural and everyday sounds, to noise, old vinyl records, church organs, chants and random voices of random people.” (as mentioned in an older interview with Nika77 for Techno.cz).

Selectone’s 2007 record Unearthed developed in a rhizomatic system, incorporating elements of glitch, click’n’cuts and recyclation. His latest record, Dead Grooves, extolls the circle movement: literally. Shaped by the revolution of the used shellac records and magnetic tapes as well as multiple recollections of his own, shelled recordings created in isolation. “Crucial was that I recorded it at a time when I lived in a haunting small town on the Polish border and spent most of the time being alone, which probably led to some strange mental states…” With his method – let it be, so that something alive would engender from the dead sound – Selectone somehow comes close to Czech turntablists Birds Build Nests Underground. Nevertheless, here focused finishing touches to the material and another thing, the proximity of the “locked” grooves and myths (Automaton, Solaris) with non-cyclical elements, such as guest vocals of Miriam Ingram in Dead Swan or the dub-inflected rhythmics of the space in Positive Einstellung. The fascination with side effects and micro-sonic textures, which accompanies the project from the very beginning, as if veiled the whole record with a constant membrane of rain or crackling of fire – depending on which substance is closer to your consciousness – setting another distance from the focal point of this aural anémic cinema.