Matrixxman‘s debut LP Homesick is due out July 10th via Ghostly International, and is currently streaming via the label’s Soundcloud page. The San Francisco based producer has released 12 EPs since 2013 on labels like Dekmantel, Spectral Sound, Delft, and Soo Wavey Records (the imprint he runs with fellow producer Vin Sol); but this is Charles Duff‘s first solo foray into album length output.
While his EP releases have focused on various club styles in-and-around techno and house, the new record is a conceptual album that is informed by the musician’s preoccupation with science fiction and futurism. Or, as Huff recently explained to Resident Advisor:
“Homesick is a film with a nebulous plot taking place in a dystopian, post-human future involving emergent AI, interplanetary travel, reckless pursuits through steamy metropolis alleys, neuroenhancement drugs, extreme polarization of social stratification, ethical issues of whether or not it’s kosher to casually sleep with a robot that actually has feelings; but, perhaps most importantly: the evolutionary step of leaving physical form behind and existing solely as data…”.
Heady stuff indeed, but the perfect material for Huff’s minimalist brand of techno. Inspired by Detroit pioneers like Robert Hood and Jeff Mills, Duff employs a tightly honed rhythmic language with gritty, cinematographic ambiance. Using his stories’ narrative structure to guide Homesick‘s sonic development, Duff’s recent years of peripatetic exploration are here tightly distilled in the service of his singular, future-forward vision.
