PROGRESSIVE FOrM is very challenging label which has pursued "progressive
form" in music scene bravely in electronic music scene after club music,
even though from world point of view.
We can say its brave and clever stance had already went beyond the framework
of Japanese label involving transition and stretch of time which various
sounds like house ~techno~ break beats~ electronica and so on has in fact
and also connecting straight with post digital technological stimulating
theme like click&cut or glitch. The truth is , it had been merely released
Japanese ones.
A full-length album which is made by foreign country is finally released
from PROGRESSIVE FOrM. His name is nq. "recording syntax" is his special
first full-length album.
nq aka Nils Quak is young guy who is 26 years old and lives in dortmund,
Germany and he used to play drums in some punk/hard core bands before he had
started making electronic music. As for influence to make music, he notes
items of labels like Warp, Reflex and Mille Plateaux, Sonic Youth, Jim
O'rouke, Morton Feldman, every works of Brian Eno, the sound he hears while
he is walking town and at last, every bleep and glitch sounds.
It's not quite maniac but very good sense. I feel I want to listen sound
which that type of guy had made. And, as a matter of fact, "recording
syntax" had been finished very elegant and thrilling record as I expected.

Frankly speaking, I think it is two outstanding ways that basic track
structure is either formal(this is again connected to the label's name) or
non(or anti)-formal are divided "after electronica". In a word, it means
one direction is to try making other parts keep progress holding fast to
rhythm structure like four-floor and the other is to try aiming at free form
electro acoustic fundamentally thrusting objection to thought of fixed
rhythm first thing. However, the former could be just old style one and the
latter have dangerous possibility that is thrown into hard to handle chaos
or noise. Either way, we might get one another mediocre sound that we don't
need to remember its name if there weren't sense and technique.
By the way, nq had find vividly his own wonderful solution to apolise about
" form" by creative and critical practice of potential that the latter has
basically following the former's vectors on this album.We have no doubt Nils
Quak's talent just from its first track which includes marvelous variety
behind stoic development. However, it isn't exaggerated track which shows
off own uniqueness at all. It is rather very cool and even modest. It isn't
simple but isn't extraordinary. It isn't ordinary but isn't irregular. This
is contemporary electronic music's update of its form in eternal meaning.
When I meet record like "recording syntax", I can't help feeling
" electronica" had set into ripe period finally. The name nq must be engraved
in history of electronic music. It isn't necessarily in outstanding one.
However, it won't be worn out, for sure.

Atsushi Sasaki (HEADZ/FADER:www.faderbyheadz.com)