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Auden - Hunger

Name: Auden - Hunger
Item: Auden - Hunger
Author: Ray Philp

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Auden's approach to techno mirrors the hybrid tendencies of Hotflush, the label which has released all of his music so far. The producer's two EPs drew from various strains of UK club music—breakbeat and rave, in particular—and rendered them in greyscale splodges. The post-euphoric downer of "Tension," from Auden, and the smouldering rave stabs in "Lock In", from Wall To Wall, captured to some degree what Auden was going for. On aspects of Hunger, there's a better balance between the producer's own bleak tendencies and the bittersweet music those tracks reference. Those two ideas merge beautifully on the title track. Its prancing breakbeat drums and full-bodied, garage-y vocal invoke the contours of those genres without colouring the gaps in with anything so familiar as, say, an Amen break. Alan Fitzpatrick's remix of "Hunger" turns up the foil-thin shards of modular noise and puts his foot to the floor on its metronomic beat. His small adjustment to the vocal changes the mood: instead of asking for submission ("give in to hunger"), it merely repeats the title, emphasising the primal undertones. When Auden's focus narrows, as it does on "Simmer" and "Sewer," the results fall short of the title track's standards. "Sewer System" is an absorbing rhythm exercise, though hardly compelling enough to be much more. "Simmer"'s elastic bassline is nice as a tee-up for another track, but without much else to hold your attention, it drifts by too easily.
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