A Taut Line - Restoration (2024)

A Taut Line returns with a new album of his trademark damaged and disorientated fourth-world post-electronica sound. Lush, dense, humid, and packed full of emotive yet restless energy. RIYL Huerco S., Actress, Four Tet, Jamal Moss, Michael J. Blood, Rezzett, and more... A Taut Line is the solo project from Matt Lyne, also one half of the group Greeen Linez. Matt Lyne founded Diskotopia as an events collective in Osaka in 2005 and, after relocating to Tokyo, transitioned it into a record label in 2011 with Brian "BD1982" Durr. Over the past 13 years, Diskotopia has been releasing music from a diverse range of artists such as Memotone, SeekersInternational, Wally Badarou, Hyetal, Visionist, Rabit, Silvestre, Fujimoto Tetsuro, RGL, Shy One, Doc Sleep, Glenn Astro, and many more. Restoration, A Taut Line's sixth full-length album, marks a kind of rebirth and new direction from the distinct expression of the critically acclaimed conceptual sister albums Loss (2022) and Never Any Gain (2023). There's a sense of the youthful optimism of the earliest A Taut Line EPs tucked within disintegrated elements of deep house, trip-hop, hardcore, dub techno, post-punk, post-rock, and ambient that are all deftly weaved together to construct Lyne's now trademark disoriented fourth-world sound. Lush, dense, humid, and packed full of emotive yet restless energy, there's a sprawling nature to the bumpy journey Restoration takes you on. 'In-Joy', an upbeat mangled-VHS rendering of a Terada-esque J-house groove, sits only a few tracks after 'Snowfall on the Debris', a piece recorded in response to the devasting scenes of the aftermath of the Noto Peninsula earthquake, which uses traditional Japanese instrumentation intersected with icy glockenspiel droplets, a haunting choral ostinato, and heart-wrenching accordion. Opener 'Eurasia' sounds like a Vex'd and Goth-Trad collaborative production of an A Certain Ratio and His-n-Hers-era Pulp amalgamation; whereas closing number 6Aita evokes the image of a Kodak-Super-8 filmed documentary about a To Rococo Rot live tour where the bus driver was exclusively listening to a Boards of Canada remix of Smashing Pumpkins' 1979. Nervy and mercurial, there is plenty of room to find something to your liking within this volatile kaleidoscope of mutant hybrid sounds.