At the beginning of the year, Darren Ho released as Driphouse a cassette album under the simple catalog-title Root 91 on Root Strata in San Francisco. Now, it’s being re-released on vinyl at Spectrum Spools, the label curated by John Elliott of Emeralds. Consequentially, it’s now called Spectrum 008. The time that the musician living in New York saves on not having to come up with creative album-titles, is instead spent on technically elaborating his instruments – some of his synthesizers are actually hand-made. That’s an aspect that can’t be forgotten in this reflexion, especially since it’s not all about the skillful combination of presets or knowing how to use an instrument, but instead, it’s mostly about being able to create synthetic sounds out of basically nothing. This is what used to be one of the major impulses in the development of electronic music, which is almost forgotten about these days. Hence, Spectrum 008 sounds rather off-key; everything seems a bit bumpy, like riding a bike with wheels that were hammered out of a a metal plate. Still, the seven tracks never actually turn into sheer noise – instead, they are playful, sometimes even silly, or they develop their very own engrossing and fragile beauty, of which the climax can probably be found in the spiritual mantra of the eight-and-a-half-minute track Smiley.
Spectrum 008
