Cavern Of Anti-Matter - Hormone Lemonade

The Quietus

The conundrum faced by any artist with a degree of longevity and particular musical bent: how to move forward once your volume of work surpasses that of the music that influenced you. It’s a question that must have run through Tim Gane’s mind, not least during his lengthy tenure with Stereolab and now with this, the third album from Cavern Of Anti-Matter.

In the case of Hormone Lemonade, the appropriate response has been consolidation. So while it’s fair to say that the musical wheel isn’t being reinvented, it has been given a new set of tyres with snazzy treads to aid with its forward motion and propulsion. More than on their previous albums, guitarist and producer Gane and drummer Joe Dilworth, along with synth and drum machine maestro Holfger Zapf, have narrowed their focus on rhythm and beats aimed at right at your hips and your dancing feet.

As evidenced by the smiling, gurning and grooving reaction to their barnstorming Saturday night set at 2016’s Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia, Cavern Of Anti-Matter make music made for dancing. Sure, they also make music to gouch out to, but here the trio has taken a streamlined approach that serves them well.

The opening 60 seconds or so of the 16-minute calling card ‘Malfunction’ are swathed in layers of retro-futurist synths. Initially evoking those 1970s late-night TV lectures from the Open University, presented by chaps with unkempt facial hair and corduroy jackets, its deceptive parps soon give way to something more urgent and squelching. The beats echo, the bass throbs and the call to the dancefloor is strong. If you want more bounce to the ounce, this is where to get it.

Similarly, but more concisely, ‘Make Out Fade Out’ pumps at a glorious rate, while the rollicking and driving ‘Outerzone Jazs’ is probably best experienced gazing out of train window travelling through central Europe. ‘Phase Modulation Shuffle’ harks back to the stereophonic lounge experiments of Stereolab and with ‘Automatic Morning’ you’ll find undeniable nods to Harmonia.

Not that this is problematic. Cavern Of Anti-Matter stamp enough of their own sonic ideas and fattened-up low end to bring these ideas up to date and into the second decade of the 21st century. Moreover, the canny sequencing of the material knows that the downward journey from the top of the peak is best served by cerebral moments and wide-eyed consideration. An immersive journey, to be sure, it’s one worth taking the time out for to experience in a single sitting.

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A Closer Listen

A band break-up, although it’s a fraught experience for the people involved, does not have the same ripple effect that is caused by, say, a couple in your social circle splitting up – you don’t have to work out who to spend time with, there’s not the awkward conversation when one of the party wants to find out information on the other and guilt doesn’t kick in if you find yourself favouring one over the other. When it comes to music, thankfully, there’s not the scenario where you are obliged to pick a side.

For example, if you were a fan of Stereolab, and frankly there is no reason to not be, then it’s probable that aside from feeling bereft when they officially announced they were pulling down the shutters (I think the official terminology remains ‘indefinite hiatus’), you would have been intrigued as to what the disparate former members would produce musically on their own. As the central couple behind Stereolab, it’s almost as if Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier have split the band’s output down the middle, with Sadier’s solo work keeping the multi-layered vocals (obviously), the 60s chamber-pop influence and elements of Brazilian and French music. On the flip side, Gane has retained the driving motorik beat, the krautrock influence and most of the analogue synths.

It’s obviously not that simplistic but Gane’s new(-ish) band Cavern of Anti-Matter’s Hormone Lemonade does, quite frequently, sound like Stereolab without the vocals (case in point: “Phase Modulation Shuffle”, where even the title sounds like a off-cut from a ‘Lab release). The Berlin-based Cavern is clearly Gane’s project but the building blocks for this album stem from Holger Zapf, who had a fairly limited input on the first album Blood Drums but has considerably increased his role in the trio (with Joe Dilworth’s drums completing the line-up). This essentially laying down a groove for the trio to then improvise over; presumably, they could start, get locked in and then stop at some point between the next 60 seconds and, say, a week on Wednesday. So it is that opener, and longest track here, “Malfunction” builds up quite a head of steam before hitting the emergency brake mid-way through and starting all over again.

Like its most obvious creative precedents (Can and electric-period Miles Davis), Hormone Lemonade is an album that is borne in the edit suite, and really benefits from the discipline that introduces. There is a lightness to the music here; not in the sense that it lacks heft but rather it feels effortless. “Malfunction” glides past, easing beyond the quarter-hour with nary a bead of sweat on show; it is the longest track here but it’s possible that all the other tracks could have been twice as long. Or thrice; in the streaming age, we can surely imagine an extended version lasting three hours… Many of the tracks retain the little trick of re-booting mid-way; a technique to keep the music consistent but still sounding fresh.

In essence, though, Cavern Of Anti-Matter have produced an album that is a lot of fun, that is almost breezy at times. Perhaps importantly, for all of its tight rhythms and Berlin-centered creation, it doesn’t feel in debt to Gane’s usual influences. Instead, much of Hormone Lemonade sounds like a band attempting to replicate the style of electronic producers (“Feed Me Magnetic Rain” is a key example) with live instrumentation. And, by golly, it works. It feels, to borrow another album title, like an analogue bubblebath; light, frothy and a delight to listen to. (Jeremy Bye)

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Drowned In Sound 80

One of those sets in question would be Cavern Of Anti-Matter's. Then the relatively new project of Tim Gane, himself never averse to operating left of centre throughout his three-and-a-half decades in music. Having previously steered the ship for confrontational heavily politicised indiepop (and favourites of the Manic Street Preachers) outfit McCarthy during the second half of the 1980s, Gane then went on to form Stereolab alongside partner Laetitia Sadier after his first band's dissolution, again confounding expectation with every subsequent release until going on an indefinite hiatus eight years ago.

Indeed, it's this quest to continually strive for making something new with as little compromise as possible that's led Gane to where he is now. Having initially got together with drummer Joe Dilworth - also a former member of Stereolab - and electronic musician and all round mechanic Holger Zapf in 2012, Cavern Of Anti-Matter was born amid a shared love of all things Kraftwerk, Neu! and Pete Kember's (aka Sonic Boom) experimental synth project E.A.R. Based in Berlin, which suits their penchant for all things associated with the German music revolution of the seventies and eighties, Cavern Of Anti-Matter have continually developed since their conception into a well oiled machine that takes bits of inspiration from the past and builds them into a very futuristic sounding present.

Hormone Lemonade, their third long player on their own Duophonic imprint proves a veritable exercise in crafting electronic music that's both pertinent and timeless. Kicking off with an epic sixteen-and-a-half minutes long piece as they've done here might be a bold move, but by way of introduction to the trio's latest opus, 'Malfunction' serves its purpose and more. Sure, there's elements of Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' in its mechanical structure as Zapf's Taktron Z3 and Taktron Z2 synths - constructed especially for these recordings - rumble along efficiently at the forefront. Both challenging yet engaging at the same time, 'Malfunction' sets the standard for what follows, none of which disappoints.

Another of Dilworth's former outfits Add 'N' To X (check out their excellent LP Avant Hard from 1999 and in particular 'FYUZ') spring to mind on 'Make Out Fade Out', arguably the most direct composition here which also references Suicide in part. Indeed there are traces of (post) punk's more radical luminaries throughout Hormone Lemonade. 'Solarised Sound' could be a late Joy Division or early New Order outtake, its intro eerily reminiscent of the former's 'Transmission' before an icy synth takes control over a regimented machine driven beat made to soundtrack the wake after the death disco.

While 'Motion Flow' and 'Remote Confection' also co-exist in a futuristic world engineered by outfits like Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League. Avant garde and perverse in nature, yet melodious and linear to the point where the former segues into the latter ensuring continuity prevails throughout both pieces. Elsewhere,'Automatic Morning' glides along a similar motorik driven path to Hookworms and Soft Walls' transient electronica, before the minimalistic 'Phantom Melodies' provides a funereal detachment at Hormone Lemonade's close.

Devotees of Stereolab will be delighted to hear 'Phase Modulation Shuffle' could easily have slotted on any of the aforementioned's last three albums. While also hinting that band's hiatus might not be as permanent as initially suggested. More importantly, Hormone Lemonade is an endearing listen that focuses primarily on the here and now, and as a result messrs Gane, Dilworth and Zapf have every reason to be overtly satisfied at their latest creation.

Pitchfork 77

Jamming and overdubbing on top of band member Holger Zapf’s experiments with self-constructed drum machines, Cavern of Anti-Matter deliver their most rhythmically intensive record yet.