Plastikman - Recycled Plastik FLAC

I have to say I find this less interesting than other Plastikman releases. I imagine it's probably a "you had to be there" kind of album, but the thing I value most about Hawtin's Plastikman project are those winding, twisting acid melodies he crafted so well on Sheet One and Musik. There are very few of those here (the "Gak" remix aside); instead we get 6 mind-bending exercises in percussive repetition. Having only heard it sober I can't speak to its effects while tripping, but for home or even headphone listening I find these tracks bordering on being irritating. That said, even when he's just tweaking his 303 for eleven minutes he's still more cerebral and intriguing than most other acid producers out there. So this is unquestionably a landmark for what it accomplished in 1994 in terms of taking techno to bold new minimalist depths, but in 2012 I find that unfortunately it holds up less well than the rest of his Plastikman discography.

Try to picture a heavily pissed off man sitting in the living room of his fourth floor appartment. He suddenly grabs the two nearest objects within his reach, which just happen to be a Roland TB-808 and a Roland TB-303, and throwing them out of the window out on the street. Five minutes later, coming to realize what he has done, he quickly runs down, picks up all the pieces, no matter the size, goes back to his appartment and starts reassembling the instruments, guided plainly by his memory. Once the restoration is complete, and a few spliffs later, he begins to compose music, only this time aided by 808's sister, the Roland TB-909 ...

Basically, the above written paragraph is how I imagined Richie Hawtin back when I thought his name was another way of saying 24 carat gold. Led by the immense success of his debut album under the Plastikman moniker, "Sheet One", Richie Hawtin collected a few of his early Plastikman tracks, added two (back then) newer tunes, and pushed out a 49 minute long "Recycled Plastik" release. Back in the day, for those who refused to hear it the first time around, by 1994 there was no more debate: minimal was the way. A track by track review is out of the question today, as most already know what this one packs, and those who don't hopefully won't waste much time... All you need to know is that on this particular shiny piece of plastic, you can find "Krakpot", "Elektrostatik" and "Spastik". These three tracks, more than any other, perfectly sum up everything Plastikman was about back then. Or, if you disagree, everything I thought he was about; rolling percussion, hi hats, cymbals, snares and drum kicks all stripped down to their core elements, wobbling and hypnotizing aceiiiiiiiid lines and more minimalsim than minimal techno ever needed to hear. Despite making it sound like I was describing a raging, harsh and in-your-face bullet of techno music, quite to the contrary, the greatest aspect of Plastikman's music, if there ever was one, is that his releases pack so much more than unvelied upon initial listens. Minimal, yeah, but simple and not engaing- hell no! I remember how the more I listened to this stuff, the less I became attached to the reiteration of the music, and went deeper, exploring the moods, atmospheres and shifting from one corner of my left speaker to the right one of the other. Despite sounding very aged now, this is the essence of minimalistic sound. To end, going back to what I wrote a few lines up, I would not know what to say today, but some years down the memory lane, and yes, minimal truly was the way to walk.