Through The Cortex is Terence Fixmer’s first full-length album for Ostgut Ton and his sixth solo LP overall. Out Friday, October 12, 2018, Fixmer will perform live for a special record release party in Berghain’s Säule on October 11, including sets by Douglas McCarthy, Phase Fatale and Thomas P. Heckmann.
Fixmer’s path through the changing techno landscape of the past 20 years has been anything but direct. Indeed, the French born producer, musician and Planete Rouge label founder has been influenced by the periphery of continental European dance music sub-genres from electronic body music, new beat and acid, before combining them into his own pioneering hybrid of futuristic, EBM-inflected techno with classic releases such as 2001’s Muscle Machine or the collabrative Between The Devil LP with Nitzer Ebb’s Douglas McCarthy as Fixmer/McCarthy.
Through The Cortex sees Fixmer gravitating toward a different kind of industrial-tinged electronics, led as much (or more) by analogue sequencers, melodies and ultra-saturated sounds of synthesizers than drums and percussion. Across eight tracks at a compact but varied 40 minutes, the LP touches on an aesthetic hinted at in recent Ostgut Ton releases (2016’s Beneath The Skin EP and 2017’s Force EP), revealing a sonic narrative through noisy, screaming synth/vocal riffs with a jagged, guitar-like post-punk sensibility. The LP is techno with a voice – or rather multiple voices – guiding listeners through hypnotic, space- and social themed terrain as a kind of dark soundtrack to darker days.
