- Ryan McRyhew makes machine music with soul. Not "soul" in the traditional, Motown sense, rather more in the Ghost In The Shell or A.I. kind of way. His tracks are technically impressive and programmed with precision, but there's an uncanny amount of feeling behind the futuristic sheen. It's music informed by history and made with tools from the past, but its rhythms, textures and complexities are all headed towards the future. Growing up on William Gibson and RPGs like Shadowrun, McRyhew says he developed a fondness for fictional worlds. Thug Entrancer, in a way, is his musical avatar, and his records are their own fantastical, self-perpetuating universes.
So sets the scene for Arcology, the Denver-based artist's second album for Software. It's about "high-tech/low-life society, mechanical structures and data-driven humanity," he says, delivered in the same retro-futuristic style as its predecessor, Death After Life. But where McRyhew's first full-length approached footwork with playful individualism, this record favours freeform acid and techno structures. Arcology hasn't entirely left the restlessness behind, though. Tracks like "Ghostless M.S." and "Ronin" clap, tick and rattle, while "Wage Mage III" and "Tight Lean (Perispirit Mix)" stutter with footwork's pace through acerbic tweets and effervescent melodies.
In its quieter moments, Arcology depicts a tranquil place. "Low-Life," "VR-Urge" and the title track escape into dreamy, bleepy bliss. They could sound like lost Ambient Works except for all the little curvatures derailing a full Aphex Twin-style zone-out. "Arcology" sounds like an alien dial-up, the sort of signals we've been blindly beaming out to space for decades. "Xeno" is otherworldly, too, like an answer from the cosmos at last.
Until now, McRyhew kept the dance floor at arm's length. Death After Life certainly looked to the club, but it didn't stay there—it was so technically proficient that it mostly inspired nerdy admiration. Arcology hasn't quite betrayed those principles but, as the "Ronin" video goes some way to expose, it does court a more danceable sound. Thug Entrancer's world is all the better for it.
Tracklist01. ROM
02. Ghostless M.S.
03. Arrakis
04. Low-Life
05. Terrain
06. Ronin
07. Arcology
08. Exo - Memory
09. Curaga
10. Tight Lean (Perispirit Mix)
11. Bronze
12. VR-Urge
13. Wage Mage III
14. Xeno