Eleventh

by Jason BirchmeierRepresenting Iceland's techno scene and associated with the renowned Thule label, Exos makes a splashing global debut with Eleventh, employing a chilling style of minimal techno consistent in terms of clinical meticulousness and diverse in terms of tempo-related intensity. Calling this minimal techno may almost even be misleading, since Exos' sound here is rather dense, chock full of multi-layered percussion and short on gaudy excessiveness. The fact that these 13 tracks range in tempo, intensity, and energy level make the album surprisingly listener-friendly, particularly when one recognizes the dancefloor-orientated structure of the beats. At a point in time when some of the most engaging techno tends to be of the down-tempo nature, Exos' Force Inc debut once again breathes life into the sparse style of rousing minimal techno first practiced by Robert Hood nearly a decade earlier and later written off as an exhausted style by critics.