Frank Bretschneider, Rhythm; Signal, Robotron (both Raster-Noton)

There are lots of little people, about the size of ants, and they are having a little bit of a dance in my head.  They did this last week, left loads of empty little bottles strewn about the place, it was a right little state I’m telling you.  There they are, drinking their little ice-cold, fizzy beverages, and eating their crispy little finger-food (most likely, in fact, to be crisps).  Check out the little DJ, with his little headphones on, turning down requests for little people disco cheese with a baffled “what? I can’t hear you little man”. 

Frank Bretschneider’s Rhythm is just that, dance music (techno, dubstep) completely stripped back to an essential core.  This leaves an impressively busy and thoroughly enjoyable little skeletal matrix of clicks, pops, and other electronic elements; tracks like “Other Days, Other Eyes” will, inevitably, keep the little people dancing all night.  If I could disable most of the rules of both physics and biology in order to buy a ticket for the little club in my head, I swear I would.  Bet my name isn’t in the door though.

Also out is Robotron from the world’s littlest supergroup, Signal (you take your Bretschneider, add your Noto, and then your Olaf Bender).  It is inevitably a denser affair, but it is of course all highly relative…and speaking of relative, there is a distinctly familiar connection.  It isn’t just the title that tips a little hat deferentially in the direction of the mighty Kraftwerk; some of the clipped little sounds in the mix of “Naplafa” also sound pleasingly familiar to the inhabitants of this particular man-machine-nightclub.  It gets a bit rowdy at times (as on “Malimo”), scouring the inside of my head with the abrasive Pan Sonic minimalism, but the little bouncers seem to deal with it without breaking any little heads.

These little headphone treasures are available from the home of such things, Raster-Noton.