Machinedrum: "Door(s)"

Machinedrum’s Travis Stewart makes me proud to be an American. You must understand that this was inevitable for me, being from South Carolina; choosing to direct my nationalistic pride toward the realm of electronic music is really the most charitable and non-threatening thing I could have done. You’re welcome.

You can bet I’ve even gone so far as to verbally accost people who refuse to accept that most of the earliest influential forms of “techno”—including that oft-pejoratively-transformed term itself, also: house, hip-hop, turntablism, etc.—are at least as American as Louis Armstrong shaking hands with John Glenn over a steaming McDonald’s Apple Pie at a Time cover shoot. And so I’m pretty damn pleased to find that the typically Europhilic language of post-dub-tech-what-have-you-ness has finally reversed the trans-Atlantic voyage once historically popularized in the US by a Nazi sympathizer—I mean, er, proud American. On second thought, maybe it would be better to think of this more as a good look at how global everything eventually becomes, and how my ideologically colonial, compartmentalizing attitude is something pretty absurd in the face of modern reality. That’s cold, Travis, but I deserved it.

Originating in North Carolina and residing in Brooklyn, Machinedrum presents a tastefully varied take on The World After Dubstep, emerging with something that feels at once brash and reverent, its final, buzzing moments reaching out with something not far off Flying Lotus’s sun-damaged square waves. Stewart demonstrates his talents not only as an innovative beat engineer, but as an accomplished acoustic musician, one who knows how to augment his tracks with compelling flourishes without sacrificing a sense of focused style. After all, Stewart has worked with labels and artists the world over, only adding credibility to the OM I’m currently feeling at the thought of the metaphorical techno circle being completed.

Honestly, I can’t remember being this excited about a similar recipe since the summer of 2009 and Joy Orbison’s “Hyph Mngo” single. “Door(s)” has more energy and hits the ground running but maintains Orbison’s velvet flow, all clattering, wooden bubble rhythms and buttery chords sliced with a hot knife, pressing in on all sides toward a lovely hall-of-mirrors vocal sample á la Temple of Doom, everything wobbling and drunk until the fierce clap and the tambourine jump in to pull everything into formation. Before long, it starts running faster, out of sight, dropping back with a languid smile just in time to let you catch up before taking advantage again. Don’t be embarrassed; Stewart has been at this do some time: his work as Machinedrum—and under other monikers like Syndrone and Sepalcure (which recorded a song featured in Black Swan but not included on the soundtrack)—has been lauded by both critics and contemporaries for about a decade. If “Door(s)” is any indication of the marathon stamina Machinedrum is working with, I’m going to take a breather so I can sit back, enjoy the rest of the show, and help push the patriotic pride back to the sidelines. It ain’t Our America anymore, and this just might be the track you need to keep from spending your summer vacation gluing the pages of The Wall Street Journal together with your tears.