Continuate - Par Grindvik

The 20: December 2007

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Featured Review #14

Continuate

Par Grindvik [Spectral Sound]

#14 in this month's The 20

Section: Music Reviews Topics: The 20
Written by: Terry Church

Swedish producer and DJ Par Grindvik, who moved to Berlin recently to be closer to the techno and minimal community, drops a much darker and more driving techno EP than his usual fare on Spectral Sound.

Whilst Grindvik’s latest track ‘24’ displayed a more bouncy and groovy minimal sound, ‘Continuate’ features three pumping techno cuts, including the rather crazy inflatable techno of ‘Continue In My Words’.

“The synth that keeps rising and falling in the track was made with a sampler in Ableton called Simpler,” Par Grindvik tells Beatportal.

“The falling and rising feeling of it was made by letting an envelope steer both the pitch release and cutoff at the same time.”

Thanks for the nice little production trick, Par.

“I mainly used Ableton for this song and it was actually focused around the Simpler as I thought the envelope trick had such a big striking power,” reveals Par.

“But of course there were other VST instruments involved like the superb DFX geometer, which is a free plugin from www.smartelectronix.com/.

Whilst ‘Continue In My Words’ is a cheerful and quirky number, ‘Continue Me’ wobbles down a darker valley, one that a Richie Hawtin set might meander through.

Interestingly, Dettman’s remix of ‘Continue In My Words’ sounds very old skool techno, is that 808 drums we hear?

“This remix turned out just the way I was hoping for,” exclaims Par.

“Normally I don’t like to have any expectations on remixes, but I was really longing for a proper, immortal 909 track and I knew that Ben and Marcel from Dettman were the right guys for that kind of work.”