[Klockworks] (buy vinyl) (buy mp3s)

Since its launch in 2006, Ben Klock’s Klockworks label/series has been a reliable venue for the Berghain resident’s most Spartan, DJ-geared tracks. Each subsequent release contained fewer elements, a shrinking tonal palette and a singular focus on bone-crunching grooves. “Klockworks 04,” in kind, is perhaps the most utilitarian yet, almost as if Klock expended his stock of tone color while producing One, his forthcoming debut album. It’s also the most bountiful of the bunch, adding four cuts to DJs’ arsenals.

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With the exception of “Pulse,” each track’s title is a tactile command, urging listeners to “Grasp,” “Grope” and “Grab Me.” Indeed, there’s a great deal of texture to be felt under canopies of brushed hi-hats. With its web of sizzles, clunks and hisses, “Pulse” is an utensil best used for scuffing up overly clean minimal tracks. “Grope” lets reverb-clad vibrations skitter across the stereo channels like fingers across a stranger’s back or neurons across synapses. A de-tuned and waterlogged vocal urges listeners to “get up and grab me” as shapeless tones scurry through the walls of “Grab Me,” a ghostly, 21^st century echo of DBX’s “Losing Control.” The call and response of trembling organ arrangements and steadfast backbeat ripostes in “Grasp” are the record’s primary source of melody and make for its most compelling moments. Not only a potent means for DJs looking to texturize their sets, “Klockworks 04″ exhibits Ben Klock’s full range of production aesthetics while favoring an ascetic approach that gives Marcel Dettmann’s MDR series a run for its money.