Dinky’s production career has been a bit quiet since the release of her 2009 album Anemik, an odd album of unconventional rhythms and twisted structures. 2010 held but one EP for the Chilean tech house producer, the Amanda EP for her own Horizontal imprint, as well as the Panorama Bar resident’s debut appearance on Ostgut Ton on label compilation Fünf, but that was about it. The contemplative mood of Anemik lingered over “Amanda,” yet Alejandra Iglesias’ first full solo release for the mighty German label sees her running back to the dance floor with two mighty tech-house slammers.
“Take Me” hurtles forward almost violently, with with the snares slapping at the end of each bar elastically over a two-note see-saw bass line that feels like it’s going to rip the track down the middle. Iglesias keeps her usual array of weird atmospheric touches intact, chimes twinkling and twirling above the frothing turbulence below. Incomprehensible vocal samples are pulled along for the ride, distorted syllables that sometimes congeal into words (“like a motherless child” doesn’t exactly fit the mood of the song, however). The jazzy tangents of her recent work manifest themselves in a truly bizarre few bars of horn-driven lounge house before the song snaps back to full bore mnml destruction. Slowing things down and jogging in place rather than sprinting like its flipside, “Polvo” turns those weird horns into a hiccuping bass line tickled by smooth Rhodes melodies and gradually encroaching, circling synths. Iglesias brews up a sandstorm of cooing vocal samples to flood the otherwise wide-open soundstage, and while “Polvo” is more focused than “Take Me,” Dinky’s latest dance floor single is still somewhat tempered by the tangential qualities that made Anemik such a surprisingly difficult album.
