After Keplar recently re-released the first two albums by Arovane, »Atol Scrap« and »Tides«, they take another step back with »Icol Diston«. These three EPs, released here on vinyl for the first time, are from 1998 and 1999, and you can definitely hear that from the tracks. But not in a way that the sounds are outdated or the beats tired, but rather that you are taken on a nostalgic trip back to the heyday of electronic music. The euphoria and the spirit of optimism that prevailed at the end of the nineties resonate between the beats on all eleven tracks. Although Berlin was still clearly associated with techno at the time, Zahn orients himself more towards labels like Skam and, of course, Warp, and dub productions in order to emancipate himself from this classification as Arovane. While the four tracks from the first EP »I.O.« create playful and complex soundscapes, the five tracks from the follow-up EP »Icol Diston« with their emphasis on beats, create an almost ghostly mood that sonically echoes Berlin’s ambivalence at the time between departure and abandonment. Finally, the third EP »AMX« demonstrates Arovane’s inventiveness as a remixer with two tracks, who went surprising ways with »No. 8« in particular and renegotiated the reason why a remix actually exists and just how much of a relation to the original it is allowed to have. It’s hard to believe that this innovative exploration of new means of sound expression is almost a quarter of a century old now.
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Icol Diston
