Todd Fletcher first came to my attention with the CD Star which was a very fine ambient/electronic effort with a lot of sonic surprises over its length. I enjoyed Star partly because of its rich sonic palette, but also because each cut was unfettered by a particular musical style’s confines. It's clear Fletcher enjoys a wide span of e-music, and is unafraid to try a little bit of everything--joyfully, everything he tries sounds both professional and practiced.

Todd's side-project, Psychetropic, focuses on a less traditionally ambient terrain. Heat, the second Psychetropic album, is a stunning--and familiar--surprise; the kind of surprise I'm learning to expect from Fletcher's music. Over ten tracks, Fletcher all but discards the progressive ambient tracks of Star in favor of a neo-electro sound that would not be out of place on a Defocus, or (dare I say it?) early Warp records release.

(A little background on my tastes as a music lover: when 1993-4 rolled around, a small cadre of artists releasing records on Warp began promoting a sound that came to be called Intelligent Dance Music. The flagship compilations, Artificial Intelligence I & II swiftly became America's first glimpse at this exciting and very modern style of music (thanks to a US distribution deal through WaxTrax/TVT). These AI releases were a bombshell to my music tastes--I’d always loved techno, but here were guys releasing music decidedly not for the dancefloor, and much more suited to the bedroom music fanatic.)

This brings me back to Psychetropic. With a different label and release date, Heat could easily fit aside seminal early releases by the Warp roster. Mind you, some of the impact is lessened by the fact that this CD was released in 2002 and not 1993. But, frankly, not nearly enough music was created in the early days of the genre--before the artists responsible decided to move on to different musical pastures--to have diluted this seminal sound. Fletcher's music is so compelling that you hardly care when the disc appeared. The disc immediately grabs you with the first track's fine synthwork, electro-percussion, and almost Depeche Mode melody. You hit track three, "Intricate Magenta," and the album really takes off. If I'd heard this track without knowing it was Psychetropic, I would immediately peg it to be an unheard B12 cut from Electro-soma. (That B12 record is on my top ten favorite albums of all time, and I don't believe I can give a higher compliment.) It's all here: soothing synth waves, propulsive electro-beats, Detroit-inspired atmospheres. I don't know if Fletcher is familiar with many of the original Detroit masters (he told me that he had never heard B12), but many of the tracks here wouldn't be out of place on a Stacey Pullen or Carl Craig plate. This stuff is just that fantastic.

Listening to Heat was akin to traveling back in time to when Detroit techno inspired IDM was the height of musical sophistication in many listeners' homes. Unquestionably, some of the synthwork is indistinguishable from classic work of that era. This is an incredible feat for Fletcher--making an older, very recognizable, type of music, while not being guilty of simple rehash. This is listener friendly, highly polished music. And if track five, "Heat [darkmachine mix]," wouldn't give classic Reload tunes a run for their money, I'll give up my CD collection here and now. The final track, "Particle Sea" ends Heat in a very classic way--with the fabled downtempo, near ambient track that often ended classic IDM works. To say it's perfect would be an understatement; this is right up there with Kenny Larkin's impressive work on Azimuth, as well as recent work by Peter Benisch, most specifically Soundtrack Saga.

I've got to stop because I'm starting to gush here. Heat has pushed every nostalgic button I've got for the bygone days of early "IDM" (it's a hated term in the electronic music community, but it still describes the genre best). I dare a listener to put this disc on and not check the liner notes to make sure the label really isn't R&S/Apollo, or A.R.T. As I've written, Todd Fletcher has managed to surprise me yet again--music so steeped in classic sound has never sounded better. More fanatic listeners might find the sound too derivative of older work, or worse, ten years out of date. This is a ridiculous sentiment--Psychetropic takes a sound from a now-gone time, making it fresh and new. Even now, I imagine myself seventeen years-old, tooling down the highway, listening to Polygon Window, Azimuth, and ... Heat? Fantastic work, and I hope the music keeps coming.

Available as a self-released CDR on Fletcher's own label, Microrelease.

since July 15, 2003