by Jason Birchmeier
Auch's full-length Mille Plateaux album, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, served as a prime example of the &clicks& and &cuts& movement occurring within techno at the dawn of the 21st Century. In a way similar to the infatuation with the Roland 303's &acid& sounds a decade earlier, Mille Plateaux-affiliated producers such as Pole, Atom Heart, and Sutekh took subtle click sounds and integrated these noises into their music. The 13 songs on Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye quietly arrange these noises around the songs' bassline foundation to create additional tracks of secondary rhythm. For example, small arrangements of clicks and static float atop the overpowering bassline that drives &Fast Run;& these noisy sounds replace traditional percussive or acid sounds. The other songs on the album take a similar approach, stripping away percussion to make space for the clicks while relying on the all-mighty bassline to function as the rhythmic foundation. The combination of subtle choruses of clicking and an ultra-minimal foundation of thunderous bass works well on Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, as Auch makes sure to use the noises merely as a sort of aural shading rather than relying on them to drive the songs. Auch also differentiates himself from his peers by using a broad palette of heterogeneous sounds unlike the oft-predictable sounds of Pole and Geeez 'n' Gosh, who both use similar sounds for each song. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye illustrates the vast potentials of this new style of computer-created techno and does an admirable job of creating exciting music with plenty of room for improvement.