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Klaus - "This shit takes me ages"
Wednesday 12th December 2012 | barnabas
Despite the above quote, South London’s Klaus (AKA Nick Sigsworth) makes music that sounds effortless.
His latest 2-track press is drenched in atmosphere - claustrophobic, genre-defying, it could be the soundtrack to The Nellie's slow rolling cruise into the Heart of Darkness.
Bass features heavily but this is no jump-up combo - I'm not even sure where to nod my head sometimes, and this is no bad thing. Plucky 80s synth stabs are somehow totally removed from their baggage and revealed to be truly beautiful, flowering in this indeterminate setting, rather then being tied to the 2-step; echo FX cease to be about the dub-tape-delay and become as suggestive as rain drops; choral samples are used, it seems, almost as much for the vinyl artefact of the sample as for the content of the voices...
He's been recently been signed to R&S, sharing label space with some of electronic music’s most mysterious innovators such as Pariah, James Blake, Blawan & Space Dimension Controller.
He says that writing music is about being impulsive; not rationalising... and that his parents steeped him in classical and orchestral music as a youngster, hard-wiring it into him - he had no choice in the matter.
These two points seems the most pertinent in the face of Phi and Neph. Incrediably rich and dark, I haven't heard them in a club yet but can imagine the walls fading away in the face of such broad and reverberating sounds. He talks about rigs in his home town of York, home-built stacks set up in the forest where nobody would bother them, and I reckon you can hear the space and the natual-world element of these experiences in the DNA of these tunes. They surround you, but from afar; acoustic-sounding shakes and bell trees remind you of the tiny creatures beneath your feet...
The only question left is, I suppose, where the minimalism comes from - but then, its only the content thats minimal - the effect is immersive, and awe-inspiring.
Make some space in your life to have a headphone moment with these tunes. You won't be dissapointed. The most original thing in dance music this year.
