Plastiq Phantom :: Two CDs' worth of the year's best local tracks.
2005-01-04
Seattle Weekly
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0452/041229_music_2004
DISC 1
TRACK 21.
Plastiq Phantom, "Ticonita Vive Viva" (Plastiq Phantom, Imputor?) 2:50.
A tribute to 1992 and the birth of "home-listening electronica." At that point, the distance between Warp's proto-IDM and the more limpid end of Detroit techno was a matter of inches, so you get sizzling 808 hi-hats and feathery synth chords that would sound equally at home on a Carl Craig or early Aphex Twin record. About halfway through, the Phantom drops one of those clonking Boards of Canada–style breakbeats and splinters of Sakamoto-via-Plaid orientalism, which breaks the mood by taking us up to at least 1996. A cul-de-sac— but a lovely one, like a winter lodge on a Venusian moon.
- JESS HARVELL