andre bratten: be a man you ant

André Bratten was born in Oslo and grew up in a suburb of the Norwegian capital, which borders on the deep, dark Scandinavian forest. Like most kids in the late 1990s, he was bitten by the hip-hop bug, but he also got turned on by the Led Zeppelin records he picked out from his father's record collection. He's broadminded enough to be into everything from the Norwegian electronica masters Røyksopp to Metro Area, Sigur Rós, Eno, Cluster, and Weather Report. Currently dwelling in the heart of the city, his efforts with the synthesizer coincided with a huge boom in Norwegian electronic music, his productions recently came to the attention of Norwegian cosmic disco mogul Prins Thomas and his Full Pupp colony. Andre's tracks share the exploratory vibe of the '80s synth-pop pioneers, and misfit electronic pop musicians like John Foxx, who were forced to learn to sculpt new sounds with new tools. Yet he updates those sounds to a contemporary rhythm matrix, in parallel with the day-glo analog dance music of Lindstrøm, Todd Terje, and Prins Thomas himself. His debut album, Be a Man You Ant, computes almost infinite variations on the sounds he could extract from a single modular synthesizer. So you'll find squelchy bugs in the bass-bin, weird analog squeegee smears, bright drum machine splats and the occasional significant pause. The spaces in his music are at least as important as what fills it. Listen to the movement of "I Am Square," how he gets a yearning effect from a few vapor-trail synth wipes. Or the vivid, neon synth solos in "Aegis" and "Second Steepest." "Libra" is as stripped-back as a late '90s Cologne minimal joint. André Bratten's music rejects coziness and whimsy, and steps away from pleasing the crowd.