HECQ - Scatterheart

although only 22 years old, benny boysen’s musical interests run wide and deep, ranging from bach, bartok and haydn, to duran duran, billy idol, gary moore and u2. 'today,' he says, 'i love everything that seems to be intelligent music me: speedy j, l'usine, biosphere, dälek, murcof, deathprod or james plotkin.' so it’s no wonder that on his second album as hecq, scatterheart, boyson demonstrates a knack for incorporating the musical approaches that impress him into a dynamic and crisp post-electronic album. yet unlike some of his musical predecessors, hecq’s scatterheart posits itself as a complete whole—an aural concept that spans the better part of an hour, where complex, intense breaks and melodic themes intermingle with ambient space and emotional droning. scatterheart begins with a tense ambient dirge that breaks into a post-glitch gallop on 'fdk,' then meanders through light ('madison I') and dark ('madison II') atmospheric moods in a masterfully arranged succession of tracks. periodically, scatterheart cracks its industrial concrète surface with exquisite melodic concepts. 'coup de lune' waxes mysterious with its mixture of downtempo funkstorung breaks and a languid, dense aura akin to gridlock and beefcake; the tense pizzicato strings that begin 'flood me' morph into a phantasmagoric swirl of broken hip-hop rhythms that descend into the black astructural depths of 'midnight generator.' while semblances of speedy-j’s and l’usine’s respect for sonic depth and texture permeate the soothing 'field' and crackling 'doraccle,' scatterheart remains an epic, singular musical creation.

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