Sandwiches and What Happened to the Techno present Glaswegian techno lord, rambler, and social tease Alex Smoke.
Alex Smoke is restless. He’s hungry to explore new electronic ground. And he prefers never to trace his careful steps. While his music may reside on the dancefloor along with his renowned live sets, it also resonates so much further than this. With a production style drawn from a myriad of influences that blur the boundaries between electronica, techno, classical and hip hop, Alex Smoke’s music evolves in new directions with every new project he undertakes. Musically, it’s consistently fulfilling, regardless of the listener’s preferred genre.
His results are always startling. Soma Records released ‘Incommunicado’ and ‘Paradolia’ in 2005 and 2006 respectively and thus ushered in a new era of dance music being ferried by a deeper and more musical sophistication. His compositions took the genre beyond its naïve limitations, gifting it a sensibility above its years and marking Smoke out as a true individual spirit.
In 2008 Alex had the opportunity to fully realise his love of classical music when he was commissioned by Dundee City Council to compose an entirely orchestral work which was performed by the prestigious Scottish Ensemble for their ‘Designs For Life’ project. This foray was a vital experiment on the road to unifying his polarities of sound.
His third album, ‘Lux’ we find therefore acting as a counter weight to this. Nailed in March 2010, we saw a more visceral departure point employed. ‘Lux’ was released on his own label Hum+Haw and hinted at the expansive vision of what was to come. Warped and twisted, his techno retained a classical understanding but was being consumed by darker forces.
Now the darkness is here to stay, 2012 sees Alex return with a new, more vocal-led alias of ‘Wraetlic’, a project that will focus on a shorter song-based structure and a full AV live show created by Arch Project, Japan, premiering at Mutek in June. The self-titled album will be airing on Convex Industries in September 2012.
He at once sounds utterly contemporary yet strangely alien. It’s an uncompromising work, and one that’s as arresting as all Smoke’s equally singular statements over the last eight years of his dynamic career. ‘Wraetlic’ unifies both sides of his split musical personalities. The classical swoon with a huge understanding of composition, yet grafted to the nocturnal and narcotic wild tendencies of dance music’s continual and vital revision.
Full support line up TBA.
