[Klockworks]

Ben Klock’s Klockworks moniker/label rarely comes out to play, emerging only once a year since 2006 to showcase the Berghain resident’s experimentally-minded techno tracks. The first paired the dribbling pitches and gulping vocals of “Glimmerman (Part One)” with the slightly more raving “Glandula Piti.” The starkness of the second’s “Onyx” and glancing tones of “Sean” presaged the approach Klock developed further on the BPitch single “October” and in collaboration with Marcel Dettmann for Scenario. “Klockworks 03” continues the trend while working through a more mechanical strain of minimal techno. Spectral Sound’s resident DJ/man about town, Ryan Elliot also contributes an edit included with the digital release.

A side “Steady Plus” is unemotional in its ceaseless metallic repetitions but not cold. Not that its accented synth riff — plainly spoken with an echoing tone evoking a large pipe being struck — exudes much tonal warmth. But taken alongside tiny nuances such as a tambourine’s rattle and arrhythmic chatter in the background, the combination reminds frantic dancers in warehouse settings that human hands crafted the factory precise tune. Klock appears similarly stoic in crafting the rattling 808 patterns of “Red Handed” while being more generous with melody, even if its modest, three note progression changes the most when blurred with delay. It’s also one of Klock’s most lo-fi tracks to date, having more in common with the Robert Hood/UR/Jeff Mills school of thought (even if significantly slower) than the mnml palette many producers have shunned. And just in case DJs feel Klock was too liberal with tonal color, Ryan Elliot’s abbreviated edit of “Steady Plus” strips the whole thing back to gleaming metal rhythms and the occasional synth stab.

Unlike previous Klockworks, “03” doesn’t have the same specialness about it. It does distill Ben Klock’s current sound into two functional floor tracks, but neither stick in your head or stand out from similarly structured peers. Perhaps that’s the wrong lens with which to examine the release, as its likely intended audience and venue concern themselves more with a powerful beat to keep the room moving. By those criteria, “Klockworks 03” keeps the gears shifting until night comes around a second time.