Simon Baker - Plastik / Jitters
“Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it.” It may be redundant to apply David Hume’s famous idea to a specific track – this is dance music, after all. But just like some people’s nudity is more naked than others, some repetitions are somehow more repetitive than others, while others are seemingly less repetitive, more transformative. Basic Channel is a case in point – and how many people’s lives (let alone musical universes) have been transformed by those sublime repetitions?
Maybe this is reaching too high for Simon Baker – “Plastik” ain’t that fantastic. But the use of repetition here works wonders somehow. The whole track consists of one repeated riff that attacks, fades, and modulates relentlessly (now a little rougher, now a little flatter, now a little heavier, now a little lighter). Some recent Redshape smashers have tried this same approach, and its also been a staple of many Planet E classics, not least Gemini’s “Crossing Mars”, which turns the act of looping into a type of cosmic transport.
“Jitters” is the tense other to “Plastiks’” unbridled compulsion; on the verge of unleashing the urge, it contemplates intensity again and again with a touch of menace and lots of little microrythmic garnishes around the main groove. Just like the A, it effectively features a short-tempered synth bassline with a penchant for timbral variation (attack, retreat, yell, whisper, repeat). Reaction to this whole caper among my technoid geek friends has been mixed, but what the hell would they know? This is deadly simple, fun, and effective. Or, to put it another way, there’s a joy in repetition.
