At some point, I read an interview with the guys that run Miami's Schematic label (Josh Kay and Romulo Del Castillo, who also make music as Phoenecia) where they professed a love for the city's legendary bass scene. Bass music is, of course, all about dancing and partying-- two things no one has even done within a city block of armchair techno by the likes of Richard Devine or Delarosa and Asora. Those artists seem far too focused on the off-kilter and textural to ever bother with something as base as shaking one's booty; it could just as well be constructed for the listening pleasure of a disembodied brain floating in vat of formaldehyde.

Phoenecia come at things from a slightly different angle from their label peers. While the texture of the music here will be familiar to followers of IDM-styled laptop music, Phoenecia has not abandoned the idea of linear evolution. These tracks have rhythms that seem wired more directly to the dance music tradition, even though there's little here by way of songs or dance tracks. If I really strain I can hear a connection between what's happening on Brownout and the Zulu Nation 808 electro that made its way to the sunshine state in the mid 80's.

Flipping through Brownout on first listen, I went as far as to think to myself, "This does for electro what Pole did for dub: strips it down to its most basic electrical components." Of course, electro was already ¾ of the way there on its own, anyway. And to be honest, only occasionally is this statement true on Brownout. "Grrl Trrbl" comes pretty close to fitting the "Glitchtronnix" description, with its fat bottom, clicking snare and primeval synthesizer sequence. "Odd Job" begins mired in dark sonic mud but then emerges with the classic lasersynth pattern (I made up that term; I'm thinking of the high-pitched melodic sequence that anchors the verses of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "Scorpio") turned loose on its own, terrorizing the poor track and knocking down every sound in its path.

Elsewhere, Phoenecia tend to sprawl a bit, albeit in generally interesting ways. Tracks like "Oriaca" and "Suite d256" are all dark, creeping energy, the perfect accompaniment to a nervous descent down a poorly lit concrete stairwell. Much of Brownout is cinematic, but primarily in the respect that the tracks are heavily influenced by the sound design of film, as opposed to the score. Phoenecia has mastered the techniques sound designers use to conjure images of vast, cavernous industrial spaces.

Brownout is more than 70 minutes long, but it's a gripping, unified listen. Though there's nothing particularly earthshaking or new on it, Phoenecia get big points from me for having such a clear aesthetic vision. There's a dark, paranoid and confusing headspace at the center of this album, and each individual track exists in relation to it. It may not be pleasant, but it is well done.

-Mark Richard-San