By Deuce

The dictates of electronic music have, after quite some time, finally changed course. Not long ago, one could distinguish electronic music, techno, deep house, etc. by its over-reliance on the same drum pattern (if an insistent four-on-the-floor thumping could indeed be characterized as a drum pattern).

Today, that’s simply not the case. And, though modern electronic music might not necessarily be oriented towards dancing, it provides much more diversity and musicality than its progenitors, if you will, did.

Gianfranco Pescetti’s Daystar Nocturnal, paradoxical as it sounds, is a cogent case in point of the aforementioned premise. Halfway through the album he’s invoked the four-on-the-floor idiom but once, which is quite a feat. Even more, his drums are oftentimes the best parts of his tunes.

Check out how he freaks 808s (could that be the new motif of the 2020s, perhaps?) on “Clownspunk”—as in the snare, kicks, and double-timed high hats. The track has a fair amount of bump to it, and an overdose of synths, which holds true for the duration of the album. Some are whirling, swirling, frenetic, short in stature and in the length of their notes… Hence the codification of this work as definitely electronic.

But when returning to those programmed drums, again, “Nostalgia Aime Le Rouge” has the sort that would surely be ideal for a freestyle session, were they not drenched in so many shifting, curling synths. This is a mid-tempo affair; the drum pattern is of the old school ‘phat’ variety and gives you something you can really put your head into.

Moreover, this is one of the few numbers in which the producer doesn’t switch up the drum pattern every 45 seconds, which he does on several of these numbers—including “Clownspunk”. “Sundog”, which has the heftiest, most corpulent (and henceforth most delightful) snare on the entire collection, demonstrates his bent for switching up drum patterns after less than a minute’s time. It also has particularly chromatic, intergalactic sounding synths that are just as big, and certainly longer than, the foresaid snare.

The artist even manages to slip in a ballad, which “Macchia” appears to be, replete with tubed guitars, a crying vocal sample, and a smattering of bass and kicks. Diversity, mind you, is one of the hallmarks of this pastiche of songs and is certainly welcome for the genre the producer is exploring.