Easy as it is to be dazzled by Dadahack’s selling point to Tap3 – and there’s definitely a wow factor promotionally formatting an album into a kind of next generation/retro standalone walkman-iPod thingamajig – Pete Davis and James Banbury now have to justify the ends that justify their IM-meets-IDM means. Static-grazed electro groundwork has the pair switching roles from factory floor foremen, unforgiving gatekeepers and sky-touching stage dominators.
Layering dance music so the senses are put on full, fulfilling alert, the electro hurrier Unwell, initially programmed marginally off-beat, flourishes into an ever-rising trance torpedo. Satisfyingly resonant without adhering to trance’s emphasis on buffing the widescreen componenet, a river of synths elevates listeners to an affirmative nervous system massage. What it does make apparent is the thought that with nothing but open air between the pair and punters, an arena-filling sound is on the precipice. Hello delivers that sound: keeping lines jagged in parts while holding a shrill line of abandon that’ll travel to those at the very back of the festival field, it’s dreamily motorized electro-house for inspiring the night sky that can only be operated using Orbital-endorsed torch-specs.
Pistons and loops have their paths operating on stopwatch time on Burnt Fox, an electronic fix jerkily functioning as if it needs a morning cup of oil before its valves can operate properly. Getting its compressions together, something clicks inside the system to experience pure human empathy for the first time when synths arch a rainbow over silicon valleys.
Beaming down synths like happy earth-bound meteors, Fuzzy Dunlop does deep techno, again making no bones about working within scratchy, un/over-processed edges As much as you want to close your eyes to it, Dadahack’s constant nudging through scuzziness means harmonious head-turning replaces meditative inhalation, particularly when the programming becomes a stroppy lil’ robot bugger that crunches its way to a forthright left-right-left ending. It’s the first sign of antagonism, albeit caricaturised: really deflating the balloon of optimism is Pattern Recognition¸ which slithers in a hinged clank into Mux Mool/Lorn territory, depths plunged by pock-marked glitches, synth miasma and chords that are the domain of Dark Overlords and sci-fi crypt keepers.
Paired with the following Made in China, the former is like a swelling of anxiety, the latter the damning, dream-shattered aftermath, done as a hissing long look in the mirror with the previous pistons now doused in fatal murk. The stark brawn and excitable evil, a Fransesco Clemente-style of futurism from a retracted '80s vantage point, defuses the previous big room euphoria to a gothic footnote of the imagination. Finished by siren of logic Rachael Bell helping Dadahack attempting to find some kind of redemption on the sprawling The Strong One, the once buoyant machinery is now keeping respectful time, anxious not to muster sound beyond a muted rustle. Dejected in desolation, a rasping crescendo has its life flashing before its circuit-welded eyes, suddenly transfixed as a wall of sound, its epitaph read by a cradling of mournful violins.
Given the short amount of album time, it’s an achievement that Dadahack have essentially divvied up Tap3 into halves of optimism and pessimism, indicating how quickly despair can bury sunrays. And also how good Davis and Banbury are at converting electro highs into downsides, ensuring Tap3 looks and sounds the part.