[1XA]

I don’t typically have a clear idea who I’m listening to when a white label release shows up shivering, emaciated, and improperly clothed at my doorstep. But I usually know where I stand. With Frozen Border or Horizontal Ground releases I’m not only getting techno, I’m getting techno I couldn’t even begin to argue with about being techno. The stuff basically begs to be pigeonholed. 1XA, anonymous in name as they come (only Rashad Becker’s tiny signature in the runout gives any indication of its provenance), manages to do the whole mysterious-techno-release thing one better on their third 12″, Waveshape/Atrium Munitions. Figuring out who’s making and releasing the stuff would be a fruitless endeavor, and figuring out exactly what sort of music I’m listening to might be, too.

Listen once, and you’ll hear some of the most expansive dub techno around — freezing, endless dashes of ping-ponging sound that nearly makes Echospace’s The Coldest Season sound like it might give you pit stains. Listen again — and again and again — and you’ll be less certain where this record gets filed. “Waveshape” features calm, austere electro rhythm that provides a deliciously funny-shaped package for this tundra. But I’m decidedly more intrigued by what’s happening on “Atrium Munitions.” (Again with the ultra-anonymity: if it weren’t for Discogs, I wouldn’t know any of these track titles.) The beats still cut this way and that way, but they’ve retreated deep within the grooves and, perplexingly, gotten a whole lot more intense. “Atrium Munitions” certainly has beats, but it has the atmosphere-driven, profoundly immersive feel of a composition that doesn’t. And while I can hardly imagine it working outside of a DJ set, I’m not sure it would fit very well into one, either. Like the enormous UFOs of so many sci-fi movies hovering in sinister silence over the world’s great metropolises, I know this record wants something — probably not my blood, but perhaps my brains, and most definitely my consciousness. And I, for one, am prepared to give it up.