Dependent and Happy cover

Dependent and Happy

Released

The album that both isn’t an album, and is more-so than most, Dependent And Happy spreads itself over four volumes and six twelve-inch singles, with choice cuts from the first two sets compiled on a mix disc. The latter is worth it if you want the ‘quick’ fix, but navigating the full two-and-a-half hours of Dependent And Happy yields greater rewards. By this stage in his career, Villalobos was known for extended compositions that married crepuscular rhythms with an almost aleatory approach to instrumentation and sampling; Dependent And Happy fine-tunes that aesthetic. Voices appear out of nowhere and then recede into murk; chipper, jazz-y keys clack and skitter across the stereo spectrum; weird field recordings dissolve as you’re listening to them. Throughout the rhythms are constantly morphing, but at such a pace that it’s like a minimal techno/house version of Einstein On The Beach. Glassian techno: now there’s a thought.

Jon Dale

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