Stagnat – Endonoma [Singularity Recordings]

In electronic music, styles often end up losing part of their charm due to speculation and the excessive use of a genre by many artists, and also by different kinds of platforms, just because someone makes it fashionable. It happened with minimal, which from its great explosion almost ended up disintegrating. It also happened with the tech-house that preceded it, in which its musical quality was rather dubious, and now it is happening with techno, simply because many amateur DJs, clubs and labels are taking advantage of this word to show themselves as the new modern, and what they are really doing is distorting this primary style of electronic music. However, there are projects that ensure the continuity and care of techno, but broadening the horizon to enter an open space, where it is allowed to feed on new textures and new rhythmic patterns. 

Singularity Recordings is a label that has safeguarded the origins of techno for almost two decades, but has also allowed its evolution to adjust to the new era of technological sound, the power of experimentation and new musical canons. Techno, like any other genre, must be explored and driven into infinite sonic environments, just as record projects must embrace this progress.

Voidloss, as the head of Singularity Recordings, and whom we always tend to link as a relevant figure in European techno, has encouraged his label to expand into different areas, such as industrial or experimental. Likewise, as we can see in the latest reference released on Singularity Recordings, he also extends his activity to the audiovisual context.

Endonoma is an album of a single piece created by Stagnat, an audiovisual project that works from anonymity and that signs with the English label a very interesting release, as it shows the development of the live performance of this Slovenian duo. Musically, this single 45-minute track could be divided into 5 parts, into 5 fragments that evolve in parallel and at the same time need to be superimposed to create a uniform element.

During the first two minutes we hear the sound of a small stream that dissipates as the listener enters the interior of a cave, giving way to a long sequence of random notes that place you at the beginning of an unexplored and mysterious scenario. At the second point, around minute 6, is when an unfathomable rhythm appears, which, together with the remoteness of the drops of water falling from the underground ceiling, manifests that the peaceful path is giving way to a deep underworld. The rhythm intensifies, more percussive details appear and the aura of mystery is maintained until a new change arrives around minute 19, with penetrating synthesised gunshots allying with a consolidated rhythmic structure. At this point in the track the pressure in our organism changes and everything contracts until we reach the very gates of hell. The last part starts at minute 33 and evokes a strange and dark situation again, in which souls wander and the landscape is extinguished.

The evolution of the images, as well as staging all this imaginary content, allows the spectator to place himself in the same context that Stagnat expresses without hardly offering any visual clues, only in an introspective and immersive concept.

Release date: March 24th, 2022.