Spectrum Spools, a sub-label of Edition Mego in the hands of Emerald’s John Elliot, was originally founded to display the wide range of contemporary American synth-music. Remarkably, the label actually manages to add a further facet to their program with every new release they come up with. It’s the same with Container, a project by the musician Ren Schofield from Nashville, Tennessee – his recently released album is probably the most easily approachable but a still not conventional record of Spectrum Spools. Five tracks with a noticeable background of minimal techno and experimental electronic music prove in 36 minutes of playing time that techno surely doesn’t need to be thumpy, but sure as hell is allowed to be. Quite a few things are undecided on this record: Application starts out as a shaky four-timer with swabs of dub and then grows into a infernal thumper. At the same time, Schofield lighthandedly switches back and forth between the beats. Protrusion comes along as an unemotional minimal techno-track but then displays Schofield’s musical skills. Dissolve takes same lines, just in nine minutes running time, instead. With 150 bpm, Overflowis definitely the punkrock-song on Lp – wild, impetuous and raw. The final Rattler, on the other hand, picks up the sound-parameters from the a-side, compositionally builds up a climax and then finishes it all of with an undefined ending in static noise. All in all, Container’s music is not in any way interested in finding solutions to the questions it poses.
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