[PAN]

Jeff Witscher’s Rene Hell has always been hard to get a read on. His discography sifts through variants on synthesizer drone, computerized chamber music, and techno, as well as some less classifiable styles (see: The Canon). For Vanilla Call Option, his first recording for PAN, Witscher introduces a new chapter, delivering a menacingly playful sort of electroacoustic music.

The artist works in the upper register throughout, and as a result his palette is pristine, verging on shrill. These assemblages spin together an array of machine squeals with little more ambition than exploring the sounds themselves; it’s no wonder Witscher cites Bernard Parmegiani, who similarly reveled in pure audio, as an influence here. The arrangements slice and sear and rip open their own seams, but they have a delicate beauty at points, too, in the waves of fine sand that open “this is chess,” the rippling calculator arpeggios of “smile models,” or the popping aluminum that underscores “var_len.” Witscher’s other impetus for making this music, however, is his interest in chess, and this adds a layer of ominousness.

I played several games of computer chess to this album, and a processional aspect, intermittently broken up by dramatic strikes, correlates. Witscher’s inhuman landscape does as well — in the game, of course, abstract figurines stand in for humans at war. As a matter of fact, the producer’s interest in combining austere machinations with degrees of human touch might be what truly ties Rene Hell together. Vanilla Call Option stands out for how reduced its human touch is. Each of these moments is magnified: midpoint track “merci cheri,” with its solemn orchestral blur, the tightly looping synth-vocals on “var_len,” the church organ that busts out of “furniture music,” the bare piano strokes concluding “kalashnikov uzi”. As memorable as they are in the scope of the album, they are too minute to carry much emotional punch, and instead act as respites from a hostile environment.