MARC HOULE
LICKING SKIN
MINUS78

Marc Houle?s music is always innovative, experimental and unconventional, his live sets, choice of instruments and track titles never fail to grab the attention while his natural instinct as an electronic musician is to take the listener out of his or her comfort zone, dismantling the strict set of rules that techno music adheres to in the process. These two digital only tracks build on the foundations laid by last year?s sixty-four collection and will certainly appeal to lovers of the avant garde, so if you?re looking for familiar, user friendly beats that blend seamlessly and don?t ask too many questions?don?t bother reading any further.

Apart from the clinical drum machine groove Houle employs on Dirty Dirty, there?s nothing that remotely resembles anything from your standard soundset, yet it somehow remains deliciously monotone and minimal. If techno ever found it?s way into a Tarantino flick then Dirty Dirty would be a prime candidate with its fuzzy plucked guitar surging through beaten up amps and crazy, oscillating analogue synth line that seems to rise and fall simultaneously, creating bedlam. Houle makes it all sound so ridiculously easy as he stitches his wild, staccato riffs together, applying heavy doses of sporadic reverb to the twisting time signatures. A warm bassline rounds out the groove, before a secondary guitar line leads us into the tense breakdown from which the groove quickly reforms, although the shadows have all shifted slightly.

If anything Licking Skin goes deeper into the realms of abstraction cramming a night of feverish dream sequences into seven eventful minutes. Underpinned by another nervous guitar pattern, Houle sets the scene with some instinctive keyboard stabs and scary b-movie pad fx that create an odd, hallucinatory state before a chorus of chiming clocks send the Dali-esque symbolism into overdrive. What?s more, the subsequent subliminal mantra ?I like to take things apart and put them all back together? perfectly sums up Houle?s grasp of the logic of the absurd. At times it sounds like an orchestra warming up before a mischievous percussion improvisation takes control, accompanied by a chorus of heavily treated vocals that recall the climax of the early 80?s new wave punk sci-fi movie Liquid Sky. It certainly wouldn?t be speaking out of turn to suggest these two tunes deserve the same cult classic status.