Side Piece by Patricia

Don't bother Googling Patricia. Not only will your results turn up fruitless, but you'll also be missing the point of the Chicago-born producer's own brand of hardware techno. The now Brooklyn-based artist makes tracks that sound as if they can only exist in a physical place—whether they're spinning around on a dusty 12" or thumping against your chest in a crowded basement club, Patricia's rough-edged tunes are tailor made for tangible, real-life experiences. This much was made evident in the smoky dancefloor transmissions of 2013's Body Issues release for lauded DIY label Opal Tapes (not to mention his various side projects with the likes of Jahiliyya Fields, Arp, and others), and Patricia takes that rugged reimagining of vintage Midwestern techno to new territories on his first EP for Spectral Sound, Side Piece.

With three original productions and one hell of a jacking remix from Ghostly stalwart Tadd Mullinix's JTC moniker, Side Piece is a monstrous 12" built from cinderblock kick drums, soot-covered modular synths, hissy tape recordings, and equal parts early Aphex Twin and Underground Resistance. Opener "Drip Dawn" drops its submerged drum-machine groove like a burlap sack full of sewer sludge and rubbery eyeballs. Keeping things fresh, Patricia follows the workmanlike production with "Hulderhusan", a cut of deep, percussive techno that runs its 808 rhythms way into the red, while synth pads that could have been sourced from Selected Ambient Works drift around in the periphery. "Foie Gras" closes out Patricia's run of original tracks by marrying the best parts of the record's first two songs with dank acid sequences and skittery rhythms that sound as classic as they do vital to the contemporary landscape. It's obvious after just one spin of Side Piece that Patricia is a producer whose identity is merely an afterthought to the uncompromising music the artist makes.

Max Ravitz is an accomplished designer of sounds and a composer of murky, melodic music designed to elicit movement in the body. Ravitz has been a fixture in New York's punk-ish world of do-it-yourself house and techno, releasing a steady stream of records (under his own name or in duos Inhalants, Masks, or Pulpo, but most frequently under his own legerdemain-styled solo moniker, Patricia).