Ricardo Villalobos – Empirical House LP

Even though club music and free improvisation are polar opposites, Ricardo Villalobos’s stated goal is to approach them with the same spirit. Where one uses predictability to bring people together, the other develops without the audience or artists knowing where it’s headed. Empirical House skews to the former. Its four tracks have been played for some time by the label heads of [a:rpia:r] and other DJs in Villalobos’s orbit. But the chaotic influence of his work with Max Loderbauer and Ambiq is evident in elements of the album, most obviously in the complex webs of cause and effect born from big patches on modular synthesisers.