Distraction Provisions by A Taut Line

Following on from last year's Seekersinternational presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP, the first Diskotopia release of 2017 is the 3rd solo album from label co-founder Matt Lyne under his A Taut Line moniker.

More familiar to some as one half of Greeen Linez, Matt Lyne has also been producing very different sounds as A Taut Line for well over 10 years now. Distraction Provisions is his 3rd album release after 2013's Nitriding Portrait and 2015's Mutual Prints.

Initially not made to evolve into an album, the early workings of this collection were emotional reactions to the bleak social and political situation that unfolded throughout last year, and you can hear expansions of some of the more listenable of these sketches on tracks like Estado Encontrado, m15ntet and Arriving at the Lake. However, as desolate as some of the moods are on here, last year was one of intense mixed emotions as Lyne's first child was born, and there are also moments of sheer beauty, joy and redemption on this album too – the lush-yet-grainy pad-wash of A Perpetual Medium and the luminous tropicália syrup-tech of The Soft Touch being two examples that reflect that.

However, when the conflicting temperaments clash, the product is the brutal choler in tracks like Purest Health2 and the weird dismantled hardcore-dying-at-samba-parade mess of Intertransmission.

Other notable tracks include the bleepy rave-tempo chalk dust electro number Hatsudai, which curiously illustrates an unexpected sense of optimism in its dancefloor rhythm, albeit murky and dripping in paranoia, that does stealthily lie in places throughout the album. This same optimism can be found in the locked middle section of FebruarySnow, even though frozen in the centre of metallophone-led icy dub-techno melancholy.

But how to characterise the album as a whole? As Philip Sherburne wrote in Spin Magazine in 2013 of Nitriding Portrait - "What kind of music is this, exactly? Half a dozen listens in, and I’m still not entirely sure." - although Distraction Provisions has amalgamated mutant remnants of house, jungle, jazz funk, industrial, and new age 4th world neo-classicisms, once again, we're still not entirely sure either.

A Taut Line is the primary moniker for Bristol-born, Tokyo-based artist Matt Lyne. He runs the Diskotopia label with BD1982 and is one half of Greeen Linez, a collaboration with Cambridge-based long-term musical partner Christopher Greenberg. He also releases under several anonymous pseudonyms.