Justin Foley (The Austerity Program)
SPB: What’s the last record you didn’t care for on first listen that has grown on you since?
Foley: Terrence Dixon's From the Far Future, pt. II. Here's the very little that I know about it: Dixon is a legendary Detroit techno DJ who put out From the Far Future Pt. 1 twelve years ago. So over a decade later he comes back with a sequel and it's very minimalist techno - a genre I have bunch of stuff from but zero knowledge. Just now I'm looking at Dixon's description of Pt. 1: "This is about respecting those who came before me...the art of pure Techno...taking what's old and making it new again" - and I realize I am entirely ignorant of what he's talking about.
I was hoping - as always - for a take on something that sounds like the classic Basic Channel records: very drone-y and repetitive techno that's murky and inhuman. This record is more than just monochromatic and after a couple of listens it was going to head into the rearview mirror; it just seemed to have too much improv-y synth stuff breaking things up. But one song – “Lead by Example” - quickly devolves into this insistent 16th note pulse that nailed me after I started to distinguish between the different songs. All the other parts of the song drop out and it's just dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka over and over and man I love that shit. This made me go back and listen to the other parts of the song and then go back and really reconsider the rest of the album. Now I love it.
It's always disconcerting when you hear one thing an artist does that really, really grabs you when the rest of their output doesn't. I always wonder: if they did that thing that is so cool, what am I missing in the rest of what's here? In these days of so much music being available, it's about the only way that anything actually turns into a grower. All the other music that doesn't get some hooks into me early on gets discarded as I keep attacking the "to listen to" pile.
