Sam Macklin is a good guy, I know this because I’ve booked him to play shows, had him come on my radio show and even bought records from him. I’m a fan because he’s one of those local iconoclasts who continue to plow through music with a specific vision, all the while developing sounds in a manner unlike anyone else in the city.
Sam’s as much of a fan of The Fall as he is of Fennesz and it shows in his work as connect_icut. It’s a glorious explosion of granulated digital thought, like if someone blew up your local indie records store and attempted to rebuild it using a copy of max/msp while drunk on Guinness and Red Bull.
There’s a bunch of connect_icut records out but Sam’s really hit his peak with the digital release of Fournier’s Algorithm, his fourth album on his own CSAF Records. Although it’s a digital release it’s split nicely in two sides, call it virtual vinyl if you will.
There’s lots of people in Vancouver plowing a certain vein of ambient there days but Sam has created something really unique here. Leaving the drift to Loscil and the noise to people like Scant Intone, he’s created a chiming distillation of his passion for laptop generated ephemera and the work of Mark E. Smith and My Bloody Valentine.
If ever indie-IDM were to spawn fully formed from the head of Steve Jobs and Kevin Shields, Sam may have just cracked it here. The Pacific Northwest has always had a much organic, oceanic feel to it. This is the kind of thing you’d expect a wee girl in a cardigan to sing love songs to commodore 64′s over in as un-ironic a way possible. Thankfully, it’s also the most unique things Vancouver electronic music has put out in ages, so it’s a win-win situation all around.