April 18, 2025
What Sonic?
Broken Britain, late 1994. Amidst a welter of Tory sleaze, John Majors Back to Basics campaign is dead in the water. No one is buying the traditional-family-values mantra of the hypocritical, festering ruling classes. Into this intense, contradictory culture, in which acutely fertile dance scene clashed directly with an ossified establishment, came The Magus Project, who some 30 years ago in a small bedsit in Fulham, took the sounds of the moment and distilled them into five electronic objet dart, hitherto completely unheard. If spooked-out ebullience can be said to exist, then the esoteric-futurist techno of Wave Control—replete with joyously syncopated kicks, snares n toms-workout, cavernous vibes and a Zen-minimal acid-tinged synth hook—personifies that mood. Made with the same minimal tools—a Roland S760 sampler, the cumbersome Waldorf Microwave synth, a Yamaha FX500 effects unit and Cubase on a Mac Classic—0200 might at first present as a doom-laden techno twanger, with its portentous taiko n gongs intro; yet with typical sleight-of-hand we are instead immersed in Basic Channel-esque dub-techno atmospherics, anticipating Monolakes 1997 Hong Kong album.