Ex Machina - Aril Brikha

Ex Machina

Aril Brikha [Peacefrog]

#13 in this month's The 20

• Section: Music Recommendations Topics: The 20
• Written by: Terry Church

Aril Brikha has been teasing us recently with appetizing slices of dancefloor heaven. In April he dropped ‘Akire’ on Poker Flat, a gorgeous progressive techno record that sounded like peak time Sasha. Then in May he released a warm-up EP for his new album ‘Ex Machina’. 

Finally the LP has been released, and it is everything that it promised to be: dark, inspiring, captivating and underground.

It’s also as dancefloor-focused as Joris Voorn’s recent album ‘From A Deep Place’.

More progressive and less techno than Voorn, Aril Brikha gives modern techno a sexy house feeling.

No glitch, no bleeps and no minimal aesthetic, instead he offers warm melodic basslines, seductive reverb-infused pads and synth heavy FX.

Aril Brikha also cleverly uses his lead lines, by stripping down synths to their core.

Rather than deconstructing beats and FX like a minimal producer, it’s the synth lines that have been cut back - the beats are still heavy.

‘Room 337’ is a soulful, delicate number with a unique downtempo vibe, ‘Kept Within’ and ‘Contact’ will set darker dancefloors alight, and Brikha even tries his hand at breakbeat on ‘Lady 707’.

There’s also an obligatory chill out track or two – electronic music producers are always keen to show diversity when they release an album - but who wants to chill out when you can get down and dirty with Brikha’s trancey techno?

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