SHAO - Midnight Mountain Review
“The entirety of Midnight Mountain is deep and hypnotic; every one of the 11 tracks builds, surges and recedes in a smooth fashion.”
Midnight Mountain, the latest full-length from Chinese techno producer SHAO, sits in the centre of a murky Venn diagram — between the spaciness of Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems alias, the cool precision of Monolake’s headphone techno, and the moodiness of Richie Hawtin’s seminal releases as Plastikman. And though he may have a way yet to go before reaching the lofty heights of such techno heavyweights, SHAO clearly has a keen ear for what sets his influences apart as masters of the genre. For as well as keeping one eye firmly on the dancefloor, he also takes a sound designer’s approach, weaving his set together with pensive interludes and imbuing the beat-driven tracks with a sense of looming space and depth.
The cover art features a blurred black and white image, which from a distance resembles the titular mountain range but, on closer inspection, appears more like a pulsing sound wave. A suggestion perhaps, that the mountain in this case is one that peaks at midnight in the dark confines of a nightclub, and continues on a journey of peaks and troughs into the small hours. And while Midnight Mountain is a record that will best make sense in the hands of a DJ, playing it out of a towering stack of speakers (preferably several hours after midnight), there’s enough depth to SHAO’s production to also make it a suitable for late-night home listening.
It opens with a pair of short intro tracks. These serve to foreshadow the opposing themes that play out in more depth across the rest of the album, namely the balance of moody tension with rhythmic energy. First up, ‘Valley’ is populated by murky industrial noises and a drum hit cloaked in so much reverb it sounds like someone exhaling a deep breath; a melody plucked on what sounds like the strings of an electric guitar saunters in and would sound jaunty were it not for the ominous backdrop, instead putting you in the “opening scene in a film noir” mindset. This is followed by ‘Carbon’ — another tension builder but kind of surplus to requirements before we get into the meat of the record.
The entirety of Midnight Mountain is deep and hypnotic; every one of the 11 tracks builds, surges and recedes in a smooth fashion. If you’re looking for dance music with precipitous drops or euphoric breakdowns, you won’t find it here. But make no mistake, this is definitely music designed for raving – preferably in some cavernous Eastern Bloc warehouse or a pitch-black basement in Tokyo – a venue where the DJs play for hours on end and the night bleeds into the day and back into night again.
For the first half of the album, SHAO favours mood and tension over rhythm, taking his time gradually building up the energy levels. The polyrhythmic ‘Drifting’ manages to sound simultaneously up-tempo and relaxed, with a languid guitar line and the occasional breathy exhalation again laying down a very “noir” atmosphere, but this is peppered with an urgently flickering bass pulse that makes you feel the beat is about to pick up at any moment. ‘Midnight Shift’ chugs along on a mid-tempo kick, while high above the mix crystalline water droplets and ghostly sound effects keep things decidedly spooky.
In addition to his career as a DJ, SHAO has also done work scoring theatre productions and, in 2011, was invited to compose a new soundtrack for the silent movie and Sci-fi classic, Metropolis. This narrative approach is in much evidence on Midnight Mountain with its focus on mood and atmosphere. That being said, the second half of the album, where the energy shifts up a gear, is undoubtedly stronger. The metallic pounding of ‘Unknown’ sounds like Autechre tuning up their equipment; followed by the much pacier ‘Blurry Horse’, which surges along on a soft kick drum and strobe-light mimicking synth pad. With its relentless acid bassline and oscillating waves of reverb, ‘Spiral and Laser’ is the track most indebted to Richie Hawtin, and along with the following, ‘Bubble V3’, has something of a live-jam feel, where it sounds like SHAO is manipulating filters and tweaking elements on the fly.
This kind of austere minimal techno can sometimes feel burdensome in album format, but thanks to the soundtrack-like sequencing of the record, SHAO’s attention to mood and measured use of organic instrumentation, Midnight Mountain never feels oppressive — instead, making for a deep and hypnotic ride from start to finish.