Steve Lawler Viva Toronto Review

Tags: 2008, compilation, minimal, review, steve lawler, viva toronto

Steve Lawler’s Viva: Toronto embraces a sentiment that John Digweed once expressed about minimal electronic music – That is, that good minimal techno contains as much relative importance in the audible sound as it does in the absence of sound. Despite the wise sentiment, it was hard for me to be bought immediately by Lawler’s minimal prominence. Viva: London was a decent enough disc, but hardly a frontrunner in its category. Viva: Toronto is altogether a similar concept, mastering the devilish attitude that accompanies darkened rooms, seedy nightclubs and unfamiliar faces. However similar the genre is to its predecessor, Toronto is altogether better than London (we’re talking about the discs, here!).

Disc One (“Inside”) embraces colorful, mucky and gritty minimal-tech. Like wind rushing between city buildings, the sound on this…

Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:48 am