DJ Boring - For Tahn EP

June 29, 2018 - Shall Not Fade

DJ Boring has come through. You will know him by the emotional tide outstretching dance templates in tracks that could, without his flair, easily fit anonymously into any club mix.

Let’s pause a moment to talk about romanticism. Romanticism is a way to bypass your locus of control in an emotional situation. This has a few dangerous, and in my opinion self-dehumanizing, implications. The idea of being overcome is a slippage in control, one self-provided admittance. No-go. You might be asking yourself: “Wow?” Just wait.

For Tahn, the newest release from DJ Boring, is a breakdown and revamping of romanticism. The same emotional kinetics without any of the non-agency, so frequently revised and made an excuse of in the ~sublime~.

‘Exotic Feelin,’ the first track of the EP, takes us there without pretending that eminence is something humans crumple under. A sly track, DJ Boring makes strong use of melody and balance. A real sensual prowler. Not an inch of danceability is lost in the emotionally rich melodic etchings. Synths climb, warble, and sweetly hum over spatially generous percussion. The subtext tilled in ‘Exotic Feeling’ is a simple one. A body’s magnitude is no less for its awareness of the mountain’s. 

The message doesn’t stop there. The message never stops anywhere.

‘For Tahn,’ the second track, is a reverence of air. In the US, Tahn has been the surname prominently of farmers, though most farmers have a different surname. Using an acuity known primarily to themselves, Tahns were able to assess the nitrogen and mineral content in the air and its subsequent interaction with the soil. The vocal sample in DJ Boring’s second track is a whimsically throated lady intoning an old sub-lingual prayer among the Tahn’s used at least up until the 1880’s. Were the sample not so loaded with intention, its repetition may have felt redundant. As it is, the track’s gentle synths and arching pads are a wind-enthused communion. Whether DJ Boring is aware of the rich history of Tahn or simply has a friend (the name is popular in Australia) or fictional character to whom he pays tribute matters little. History converges without a conductor.

I’d hate for the readers to get excited about a purely elemental EP, because that’s not what’s happening. ‘Stuck in Russia’ is a hermetic dream. A solitary wrestling match. The third track is rife with call-and-response bloops and beeps. This circular piece, without moving much forward, arranges light syncopation and spatially layered percussion to maddening effect. A danceable existential crisis, this one. 

Ever playful, DJ Boring doesn’t feel quite right about capping off with an internal struggle though it be a sexy rendering of ennui. Hence the follow up banger fake-out fake-in in his concluding track ‘Found Love.’ The final track begins with lounge-percussion and synth build up and seems quickly to swerve into a four-on-the-floor bumper only to veer towards the meditative and then capitalize on this destabilization to funk the funk out. A masterful baller, DJ Boring flexes on your ancestral memory only to bring you back to your sex-addicted club habits. ⛰️