Collin Strange - How I Creep

Pitchfork 68

Collin Strange is a fount of history from the rougher edges of downtown New York dance music in the 1990s. Now based in Seattle, the DJ and producer ran a record store in the East Village called Strange?, which found its footing somewhere between punk and the evolving strains of techno being imported from the UK. Before landing in New York, Strange was in Chicago, where he overlapped—however incidentally—with the heyday of acid house there. In a recent interview, he discusses this all with a casual record collector’s enthusiasm, noting, too, that he first got into electronic music through a relative deeper in its academic side, grounding his interest in a more learned approach than his druggier anecdotes might imply.

This history is embedded somewhere in Strange’s productions, industrial-leaning acid techno built from Roland’s 909 drum machine and 303 synth (the same building blocks that defined the sound of early acid). But, ultimately, his tracks are too straightforward to accommodate much in the way of nostalgia. The four tracks that make up How I Creep exist in their own moment, one that’s frenetic enough to override the listener’s sense of a past or future.

The EP opens on an unforgiving note and somewhat relentlessly carries on from there. “No Remorse” is steady—only around 120 BPM, which in a few tracks’ time will come to seem laid back—but still blisters, its driving beat fanned by drawn-out gusts of texture. Strange builds out from the thunderous, bristling textures of his tools, leading to a sound that’s both elemental and asphyxiatingly outsized. (In terms of contemporary analogs, I think of a severely less playful Container.) In that same interview, after playing a song by New York hardcore band Born Against, he notes, “I don’t want to make techno that sounds like a Labworks record from ’92, I don’t care about that… I want to sound like that Born Against 45. I want to sound like the first Crucifix album.” Indeed, while How I Creep and, say, Cellblock-X’s The Trip share certain aesthetic signifiers, Strange seems uninterested here in the liquid capabilities of acid, prizing instead a pummeling quality.

Though this sort of uncompromising intensity is more or less the draw here, it can be a lot when it runs on unchanging and unchecked. “Unemployed” luxuriates a bit more in its resonant squelches before settling into a grim, industrial march. The hyperactive “It’s a Dog’s World” makes use of an ominous synthesizer melody, which reiterates over barely-modulating drum machines for nearly the entirety of the track.

“More Alive Than You Will Ever Be,” a 16-minute live acid workout, is both the release’s most exciting and most exhausting offering. Once one assimilates to its forceful ground, it becomes trancelike, its incremental shifts and flourishes subtly engaging the mind while its fixed rhythm engages the body. As electronic music goes, it’s not particularly fashionable or innovative, but there’s still something absorbing in the non-referential way Strange distills his reverent listening habits.