2 out of 5

Label: Furthur Electonix

Produced by: Loz Grover (mastered by)

This is better than I’m making it out to be – as an FE release; as an electro release; for either of these, I’d be fine stumbling across this in a bin and giving it a go – but as a D’Arcangelo EP, it’s rather limited.

I’ll admit I have a beef with Furthur Electronix in the first place, as the white-label-everything style of releasing is “cool” in a way that stymies my preferences. Totally superficial, and close to a homogeny I appreciate – like with Central Processing Unit – but man, it also pisses me off, so unreasonably. I bet there’s some DJ mentality here I’m not picking up on that makes the shtick relevant, and there’s additionally likely a school of thought that digs the potentially mysterious nature of it, like having a collection of these records and not remembering which is which without putting it on. I dunno. But I do know that that bias hangs around whenever I put one of these on.

But the music is the music, and the stuff I’ve sampled can overcome that bias. That said, even with that sampling and some bandcamp skimming, I can’t quite get a feel for the label – my frustration with the white labeling returns – but I have some high level vibes that there’s a tendency towards minimalism, at least as opposed to maximalism. And that if you know you’re on FE, maybe the anonymity of the art style influences things as well.

With all that baggage in mind, only half of Dusted sounds like D’Arcangelo to me, with Aethurna Misura and Four mining the brothers dark ambience, riding some successful grooves and icy percussion for quality electro. These do err towards that minimalism, though – they are not very busy tracks, beyond their head-bobbing bounce – and Misura has one of the laziest outros I’ve heard the two commit, botching a fade out like they had to end their loop real quick and rush off the stage.

Wish I Was Out of Here and High Generations are just linear electro beats, with some acceptably playful atmosphere as a second layer, but absolutely lacking in any kind of experimentation, or much personality. They’re fairly nameless cuts. Mixed into an album, or sandwiched between stronger songs, totally fine, but as half of an EP of which the other half is good not great…