Quench Puncuated CATMD112

Don and Roel Funcken claim to have made music since they arrived on earth...and we believe them! They have been making music for the last several years under several monikers such as 'Funckarma', 'Cenik' and 'Quench'. They have released material on labels from across the globe including Neo Ouija, Isophlux, Dub, U-cover, Delekatessen, and ON records, as well as a future release with Warp's Arcola imprint under their latest incarnation 'Cane' . Their musical output has been rather impressive and equally as heartfelt and original. The Funcken Brothers now land at n5MD for a brief moment to bring you "Punctuated". Quench's first release by a stateside label, "Punctuated" Shows Quench at their cruelest. Intense yet subtle melodies, unpredictable bass-work and broken hip-hop inspired drum action rounds out this solid release from Holland's Brothers Funcken.

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Stepping aside from its day-to-day Funckarma mark, the prolific Dutch digital duo of brothers Roel and Don Funcken is a dependable mainstay of IDM found on labels such as Dub, U-cover, and Neo Ouija. Under the quench side project, the pair collect 11 dense works of pure electro that seem to waver between inviting and menacing postures on Punctuated, its first full-length MiniDisc only project.

The wordless ambience of the opening nightshelf is only one highlight, bleeping and whirring away into an empty starlight. Atop a nimble, Funckarma style percussive thread, Diaz nearly smothers the listener under blankets of synthetic texture, while Nemm bubbles its melody through an equally tense, liquid rhythm. Coil manages to nail bouncy funk together with passionate, sensuous strings, an imaginary soundtrack that opens with a naughty, flirtatious bent but ends in a seriously hot and heavy makeout session. Perhaps best Vexx brings us a brooding, mammoth epic, with relentless, tight snares reverberating into dust and primal bass trying to thump out an answer to a pain-filled string phrase.

Filled with abrasive, lush, emotionally haunting sound, Punctuated is a moving and viscerally intense release that rarely slows down to take a breath. recycle your ears

Quench have shrunk. After releasing their music on big black 12", the Funcken brother take here their Quench project to a little tiny minidisc, released on n5MD, the Grildock-founded, almost-but-not-really MD driven. Personnally, I like it better this way, as I trust more my MD player than my turntable and this item contains a lot more music but takes a lot less space on my shelves. Anyway, the music:

Funckarma's Quench side-project's third album starts off with a very calm, beatless track described as an hommage to Neo Ouija's Metamatics, and you have to wait till the second track (itself released on the Funkstörung's selected compilation "Mas Confusion") to get back to familiar territories. Highly melodic, displaying an avalanche of melodics pads and echoes, Quench's tracks here take the "full" approach of their earliest works, but package it with a more straightforward structure. This is not to say that the listener is not in for some serious conjunction of diverse rhythmic patterns and an intense multilayering of beats and tones, but the whole thing just sounds a lot more compact and direct than what I remember from the other Quench releases I've listened to.

While the gentle beats and the synthetic melodies are the forefront element of "Punctuated", the tracks's foundation are often long and thick soundscapes, made of stretched tones, slowly building and evolving pads. Maybe responsible for this "straightforward" feeling mentionned above, these elements also give to this album a more sinister edge, reinforced by the low key echoed pads that are used on some tracks (for example the dark-ish "Scid", which somehoew reminds me of Proem's "Negativ"). Therefore, while it has its ratio of abstract and flowing tunes ("Nemm"), this album appears to me as a relatively somber one, mixing some sweeping background pads ("Vexx") with some rather beefy beats ("Bud") and low basses ("Latch").

Void of the sweeter approach of Funckarma, but not too abstract, "Punctuated" is a surprisingly dark album of flowing and clear electronica, the kind of thing that has the required poetic and dreamy edge, but still is slightly unsettling and turns out more touching that one might have excepted. Therefore, besides the raw sexyness of its format, this new album is a very recommended piece of music, and very probably my favorite Quench release so far. seven

without much fuss roel and don funcken have quietly released their best material to date and most dramatic departure from their recognized sound. this release in itself is enough motivation for one to purchase an md player.

quench has been a strange beast, its first album - a fragile glitchy structure - was nothing like other projects of funcken brothers; exclude, however, was very much in the vein of funckarma, perhaps slightly simpler and heavier; the same goes for the vinyl releases on aim records and u-cover.

with punctuated quench has entered the world defined by the palette of an impressionist painting - muffled greens and blues, hushed luminous colors and overall fluid, carefree feel. the sharp contrasts that defined previous funckarma's work (notably brilliant bourbon sounds on delikatessen) are perceived as if through the sheet of falling rain that at closer inspection becomes a whole universe in itself.

this is one of those releases that takes the music out of tight confines of the genre, away from typical compositions and petty emotions. punctuated offers enveloping melancholy of delicate polyphonic textures, colossal open spaces that never lose their intimate side, wealth of gradients and subtle details. the heaviness and breaks are still present, but they do not define the overall flow of music, rather adding depth and complexity to the multilayered composition. at times I am reminded of dreamlike spaciousness of bola's soup, thoroughly re-orchestrated and refined without losing its emotional side. igloomag

Quench are Dutch duo Roel and Don Funcken, also known as Funckarma and Cenik. The brothers’ already prolific output covers a myriad of labels including Neo Ouija, Isophlux, Dub, U-cover and Delikatessen to name but a few. In their guise as Quench they already have several singles and compilation tracks to their name although Punctuated is their debut release for N5MD.

The music on Punctuated provides an interesting contrast in itself; on one hand it is modern, precise and digital yet on the other gentle and flowing. Imagine you are on a spaceship deep in space, all around you is the very latest in technology flashing and blipping away as it guides you while outside is the desolate beauty of the lunar landscape. Punctuated is very much like that; on the face of it very hi-tech with precise clinical beats and digital blips but look beyond that and you see a whole new dimension of flowing melodies and drifting texture. Examples of this concept in practice can be found in “Zane” and “Vexx”, both of which exhibit these elements in full effect. Punctuated is a skilful mix of sounds that creates contrasts; sterile yet emotive, rhythmic yet soothing, desolate yet lush. Sometimes lapsing into subtle deeper bassier territory – “Nemm” or “Latch” for example – and often adding a slightly abstract twist, Punctuated is a very direct and well conceived album. Add to that a sprinkling of dark tension here and there and Punctuated becomes a lot more than it originally seems.

On the face of it Punctuated might appear to be just another skillfully produced and constructed melodic beat-infused electronic album but looking deeper into these tracks and you’ll find a whole new direction to follow. Overall, an accomplished and enjoyable album. barcode

This Dutch duo, consisting of Don and Roel Funcken, has been around a while now, circulating under a number of different guises. ‘Punctuated’ is a re-release from earlier this year, a radically futuristic ambient album, with occasionally forays into Hip-Hop territory, and well worth a listen. The album glides through a succession of heavily filtered drones and samples, inspired by soothing synth washes, shimmering keyboards and spacious drum loops, perhaps falling between the styles of Aphex Twin and Autechre. Whilst they cannot reach those aforementioned artists giddy heights just yet, this is without doubt a highly accomplished and enjoyable release. It’s understood that their forthcoming project is being released on the Warp label, so I can think of no higher justification for testing the water with ‘Punctuated’ first. exclaim!

Under the moniker Quench, Dutch duo Roel and Don Funcken put aside the Funckarma mark and create some lush and dense techno soundscapes on the project’s first CD, Punctuated. Broody, dusty, at times abrasive and often primal; heavy filters, drones and samples drench Punctuated's melodically liquid and sometimes dark and throbbing futuristic fare with a dreamlike quality. From the whirring broken beat on “Nemm” and the electro chatter of “Vexx” to the dark techno death march of “Scid” and the escalating pulse of “Bud,” Quench’s thematic feel is charged with a dark tech edge. Haunting and visceral, Punctuated is both an intense and atmospheric audio excursion. e/i mag

Some would wish to see "IDM" reconstructed as a site for intersecting heuristics of the "intelligent" brought to bear on "dance music" rather than contemplate it's current ossification into a mix of tech-generic timbralities and rhythmic-structural conventions. The interplay of differing cerebralities And somatics should result in constantly shifting outcomes, but in practice the allure of shinny brittle surfaces has seduced many practitioners into something of an extended mix of similar elements-of beat breakage, melencolic melodics, algorithmic bravura, and occasional musique concrete allusions. For the former, more reconstructively inclined listeners, Don and Roel Funcken have set up a triangulated inquiry somewhere between the sonic strategies of ambient/new age, dub/drum and bass, and hiphop/jaz fusion. It has to be said, though, that Punctuated suggests that the conclusions of this enquiry are approaching. I say this since is reveals little that was not already apparent from their releases under their Funckarma moniker (the Solid State full-length and the Parts 12"s) or the previous Quench Exclude. It merely extends and intensifies the investigation, utilizing similar strategies. Sleek intense keyboard sonorities adorn fractured self-consciously hyperactive drum programming, the sterile wrestles with the emotive, the desolate is drawn to the lush. In fact it is these apparently polarized juxtapositions that they so successfully trade on. Punctuated strikes a delicate balance between the clean, precise, digital and jagged, blurry, analogue. Here a chilly hi-tech skein, with at times brutishly clinical beats, portentous synths, and digital blips, is inhabited by and inner life of fluidly and drift. This emanates from tracks such as Nemm - haunted by ominous drones and bell like tones, bestriding squashed ¾ waltz like beats---and Scid---all spacious pensive keyboard textures (massified by reverb and echo) underpinned by busy kick drum and snare shots, enlivened by sparks of choreographed circuitry firing.