PRODUCED BY ELEKTRO GUZZI AND PATRICK PULSINGER RECORDED DIRECTLY TO ANALOG TAPE. NO EDITS. NO OVERDUBS. Elektro Guzzi redefined the meaning of performing techno live. With just guitar, bass and drums, they take the most unusual playing techniques and put them together into a rigid mechanical form where everything makes instant, evident sense. If they had not performed live extensively, becoming audience favourites from Mutek to Sónar and from Berghain to Fabric, it would have been hard to believe this is really how the music is created. That said, it seemed impossible they could go even further in this direction. Yet that’s exactly what they did. Parquet, their second studio album sees them in monomaniacal, claustrophobic techno mode. Throughout the nine tracks the distinctions between instruments and roles are totally vaporized. While their instrumental approach is at the core of their aesthetics, it really doesn’t matter anymore if one sound comes from a guitar or bass or drum - it has all been merged into one sonic unit and all there is, is the music as a unified entity. In its quality and appeal “it shouldn’t matter if it is played or produced electronically\", say Elektro Guzzi. While all the qualities of live performance are at hand - real time interaction, visual plausibility, instant miniscule adaptations - it is a radical break with what group performances have been about so far. Parquet is as much a straight up club music record as it is rich of nuances and details. Astonishingly, while being their most rigid and danceable work to date, it also holds outbursts of beauty with tonal lines, ringing overtones and warm resonances. The rhythms are stripped down to the core and structured for affecting longer stretches of perception. Every track comes with a distinctive, almost “branding” feature - like the hypnotic meter-shifting line of Affumicato, the gated chords of Pentagonia or the abridged rhythm of Absorber. You probably have to be as dedicated as Ber