Curd Duca

Discounting the Austrian artist’s genteel self-released album of accordion cut-ups, issued in early 2020, ‘Waves 1’ marks the return of a lowkey but vital figure from the ‘90s experimental electronic scene, whose series of LPs, adorned with a distinctive play on a famous logo, caught eyes and ears in record shops around the world via release on Normal and Mille Plateaux, most often making their way to chill-out sessions (what people used to do before passing the jack-lead and playing drill at afterparties) and the best record collections.  

Curd Duca’s return could hardly be better timed for an era clearly in need of enchantment and peace, rustling together a spellbinding mosaic of sampled/processed ephemera that uncannily resembles disturbed dreams and induces hypnagogic states with its succession of soothing but elusive, fragmentary moments. In each of them there are the seeds of a respective dream, but rather mischievously and brilliantly, Duca keeps pulling the rug before you know it, leading us to tumble into hypnic jerk-like glitch blatz at unexpected points, only to open another window onto scenes of fleeting sublime, and so forth. 

  It’s exceptionally well done, constantly spouting with lovely new ideas that evaporate, segue, transition to the next with a illusionist’s sleight-of-hand, adding up to one of the cutest and mercurial albums you’ll cop this year.