Interesting bloke, Daniel Holc. The Hamburg-based groovemeister lives a normal enough life on the face of it, spending his daylight hours involved in graphic design, shopping, searching out records and generally living a likeably easy life with his girlfriend and their kittens. Nothing too stressful, like.
Thankfully, this gives him time to pour his artistic energies into his music, which he records under the assumed name of Ascii.Disko. Indeed, his regular weekly routine has allowed him the time to not only DJ at Hamburg's Kill 'Em All club night, but to record his eponymous debut album.
And, in the main, his sleek, sinewy grooves make for satisfying listening and a dance-based album that (fanfare trumpets!) actually sounds good to enjoy in your living room as well as in the pumped-up surroundings of your local nitespot on any given evening.
In fairness, most of "Ascii.Disko"s grooves are of a retroactive nature (excellent opening pair "Immer" and the single "Ne Travaillez Jamais" recall Kraftwerk, DAF and Giorgio Moroder's insistent sequenced disco rhythms, not to mention the spooked, Ultravox-style synth wash on the latter), but that shouldn't put you off because Holc has a way with rhythm and - crucially - memorable pop melody that elevates "Ascii.Disko" over most of the dance-based effluent flowing into pop's waters.
Indeed, in places the album is quite recognisable as pop in its' own right. The whipcrack beats and pitch-bending of "Strassen", for instance, give way to a tune reminiscent of early, monophonic synth Depeche Mode, while the melodic sheen and Laurie Anderson-style vocoders of "Cool" and the "Blue Monday"-ish "Photos" are further triumphs in pure pop terms and "Einfach" cheekily gets away with aping the tune of Lipps Inc's still-catchy "Funky Town." Hmm, this bugger certainly knows his hooks, that's for sure.
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Besides, even when he desires to challenge us a little, "Ascii.Disko" is rarely found wanting. "Aldimarkt", for example, is deliberately hard-edged, arrogant and glitchy, but has a natural punky energy and soon falls foul of counter melody, while the minimalist pulsing of "Setzt" never fails to intrigue and showcases a whispered vocal that's almost obscenely suggestive. Chilly.
Admittedly a knowledge of working German is esential to get to the core of Holc's lyrical input (I can only take the press release at face value when it tells me "Strassen" higlights fashion vanity and "Immer" slags off capitalists), but ultimately it doesn't matter as you usually grasp the feeling anyway. Hypnotic, moody and surprisingly tune-friendly, "Ascii.Disko" represents that particularly rare breed - the consistent dance-based album.
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