Named after an old Technics equalizer, Space Dimension Controller’s electro-house music is not of the throbbing 4/4 sound that has, at times, belied his genre repetitiously. Rather, the sound of Temporary Thrillz, second EP of the year for twenty-year old Irishman Jack Hamill, is wide and galactic. It’s built of a certain funk-come-space matter that exudes astral navigation through every pattern in the way that Drexciya cast themselves on the thudding sea floor of Neptune’s Lair. The opening track, ‘Mercurial Attraction’ even borrows a similar, classificatory naming convention. Whether Hamill was inspired or uninformed of the Detroit techno legends when he began Space Dimension Controller, it’s clear that their influence is now well-purposed.
Hamill’s net label-released debut LP, Unidentified Flying Oscillator, experimented with a wider palette but hovered too far out of earshot in 2009. His Journey To The Core Of The Unknown Sphere b-side ‘J2TCOTUS (Kyle Hall’s I’m Only Breathing Remix)’ with young new-Detroit riser Kyle Hall shouldn’t be missed. Their work reminds us it’s refreshing to hear music undaunted by roots. And it begins to show when, above Ireland, strange aeronauts whizz by. An 808 drum machine clatters hot in shuffled rhythm. For ‘Kaleidoscopic Ecstasy’ Space Dimension Controller himself becomes a vocoded narrator. What’s heard is jokingly sexed up, sung deep then high, through sighs. Pitch-bent solos and all, it works very well.
Temporary Thrillz is crisp. Its analog synths whistle and jangle against rolling percussion. The EP will sound alluring on your home monitors or in your car. Should there be any good criticism, one might find it here: In a club, deep in a mix, where sawtooth grooves push along tracks like ‘Transatlantic Landing Bay’, the overall expanse might seem too glassy. But this isn’t a wholly a negative quality. By many accounts, this sound, or one as equally accurate, should be the norm. Listeners should appreciate the dynamic range where, less frequently in other such records, the drum work really does breathe and shine. To this point, Hamill plays in and deserves to be vaunted for his consistence in detail. He lets Temporary Thrillz canter in a sometimes slow, portable funk. A gorgeous standout, ‘Simmering Emotion (Stay With Me)’, takes such time, phasing through its chords, drifting. Elsewhere, the album is lost spectacularly, though with less craft than jest, in the same maturative space that bore appreciation for the Belleville Three’s marriage of Funkadelic and Kraftwerk. With some deftness the next long format Space Dimension Controller release could be something more than refreshing, even a new classic.
