John Tejada / Anaphora
Vinyl / Digital
Palette Recordings / Released August 2013
There’s always a certain assured quality to proceedings when experienced producers produce on their own imprint. Or at least they should be. It’s home turf, and the place they feel the most comfortable, and able to express their ideas more freely.
Fresh off the back of his Kompakt album (which we gushed over not so long ago), John Tejada returns to his label, Palette, to deliver the kind of production we’ve come to expect from this ‘brand’. Spatial, but concerned with filling space as much as allowing it to go un-tampered with, whilst opening track Anaphora has hints of poppiness in its accents (at times both a trademark of Kompakt and Tejada himself in lighter moods), it’s club stuff through and through, warm, inviting techno that makes you move and smile. It’s also preparation for the B-side.
Opening with acid lines blazing, anyone who has heard the music maker in question’s track After School Special (also on Palette, but back in 2008) might understand what we mean by saying the opening of Bode’s Law carries a similar-ish atmosphere, only with more intensity. Building on those early synths to a near crescendo, we eventually drop into a rolling techno affair that errs on the progressive side, propelling us forward, albeit with some softening filtered notes, finishing up as one of Tejada’s toughest works (and best driving tracks in quite some time), and more proof of his abilities to craft both delicate and rather powerful electronic music.
