302 Acid - 302 Acid 0005

302 Acid - 302 Acid 0005 (Even Calls) (Em-t 2005) (320)

Gel-Sol was also in the band 302 Acid for a few years and made this one great album with him in it.

Review from here:

After a long hiatus, em:t appears to be ramping up its release schedule, once again delighting us with its signature style of elegant electronics. The latest addition the em:t roster is 302 Acid, a threesome from Washington, D.C., whose premier release on em:t is a soundtrack to the dark undercurrents of the American psyche. Composed of Doug Kallmeyer, Justin Mader and Andew Reichel (who previously released a record on em:t as gel-sol), 302 Acid is the end result of the threesome's fascination with all the various bends and warps of the outer genres of modern music.

Fabricated of equal parts hardcore, prog, punk, classical and experimental electronics, Even Calls is a collision of these styles as a modern noir soundtrack, a cracked teacup ride through back alley art spaces and basement tattoo parlors. "Quest" hops and skips as a syncopated drum kit tries to rein in a series of wild keyboards that are spitting caustic melodies throughout a cavernous cistern. "AIBOC" moans with wind moving through the strings of a warped cello, a dead instrument that is borne across an empty field on the back of a percussionist and DJ who provide an elegy for the haunted instrument with a duet of drums and vinyl scratches.

"Six" begins with celestial echo of the warped cello's death song, a radio signal re-transmission of the stringed instrument, before breaking into a rhythmic downtempo piece. "I believe in magic," a voice whispers deep in the cascading space tones and crackling percussion of "Push Button," a spectral voice that explicits haunts this track but seems to embody the whole thematic structure of the record with its confession. "Mortariggus" wanders into dark ambient drone territory, unspooling as a series of vibrant vibrations filled with slippery darkness while "Nocturnum" is composed of fading bell tones, a dying signal that doesn't start very loud and decays gracefully into silence.

Even Calls is an easy record to put on the stereo; you just set the repeat to infinite and forget where it starts and ends. Your room just fills up after awhile, the shadows moving and dancing in time with the beats. Even Calls caters to the nocturnal crowd, to the lurkers after midnight who need a soundtrack to accompany their nefarious activities. This one gets played a lot in my office after the sun goes down. It makes the space less cold, less empty. Very nice.

Another review from here:

Not resting on their laurels, em:t is back with its first release for 2005 and presents a full album of the artists Doug Kallmeyer, Justin Mader and Andrew Reichel of 302 Acid. As always, em:t explores the boundaries of musical creativeness and style and this is certainly the case with the 0005 album. 302 Acid features highly complex sculptures of beeps, clicks, cuts, samples, electronics, soundscapes that together explore imaginative dark & psychedelic atmospheres. The opus comes in 12 tracks but we found the album to be more a full listening experience than just take a few tracks for a separate listen. The overal sound reminds a little of early Future Sound of London complexity and psychedelica transformed to the new millenium with clicks, buts and bleeps. The "Push Button" track is one of the heights of the album where a dark melancholic melody & beats are woven in somewhat old-skool ambient textures. Or take another amazing creature: "Road Trip to Tokyo". Dark synths, rough electronics, squirling noises & dubby beats set the mood while here and there funny Japanese vocal samples create a nice contrast. While bleepy soundscapes, hip french vocal samples on "BD Williams" take you further on the album, "Quest" again pulls all registers open for dark and hard rumbling bass & broken beats, atmospheric melancholic synths and that wonderfull mixture of early ambient sounds with today's hi-tech electronics. Finally after this very involving listening experience, Acid302 slows down with Nocturnum, a minimalistic ambient track with little bells and soft keys almost as if to say goodbye on this album.

The new em:t 302 acid album is intense and pushes the experimental envelope a little higher than the average em:t album already does. The album is not something you'll want to listen to as background music. To discover the full potential of its complexity, you will want to opt for about 60 minutes of concentration. Happy discovery!

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