Boston-based Pete Cassin aka Dev/Null has made a name for himself as a breakcore connoisseur all the way. Since the early 2000s he has been active in the American rave scene, playing at parties, hosting radio shows, operating a reissue label as well as a blog, and producing a number of breakneck tunes that popped up on various compilations.
Most recently Cassin released a set of tracks in a junglist style: Pocket Selector: A Selection Of Micro Jungle. Remarkable about this release and its follow-up, an 8-track album named Microjunglizm that is published on Evar Records’ sublabel Rave4Evar, is not only its dense and dark atmosphere, but the gear it was produced with. “That’s boring nerd talk,” we hear you say. Right! But first of all, the material is amazing anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Secondly, it’s an important detail to show how things sometimes come full circle:
Cassin got himself a PO-33, which is a portable, pocket-sized sequencer manufactured by Teenage Engineering. While on tour as a DJ, Cassin would toy around with the PO-33 during the day, creating tracks that he could include in his sets at night. Some of the tracks he created were “raw, unfinished 3-minute things which get played once and never again,” Cassin states. A few of these tunes he played at parties in Los Angeles thrown by Aura T-09 aka Marcia Pinna. And Pinna, who operates Evar Records together with John Frusciante aka Trickfinger, wanted to release material in the vein of the stuff Cassin would drop. “I’m happy some of the tracks are coming out on Aura T-09’s label,” Cassin concludes.
A particular highlight on Microjunglizm is the track “Dark Fours”. We are excited to premiere the video made for this track ahead of the album’s release tomorrow. The psychedelic video was produced by interdisciplinary artist and designer pppanik. It is an experiment “with time, space, and movement, using audio-reactive techniques to create a vibrant work synchronized with sound,” as the label says. But you better get convinced yourself: