János Másik - Trance Balance

Very smartly presented archival release of Hungarian composer, Janos Masik' 1989 curio, Trance Balance. I'd previously encountered Masik' work via his collaboration with the great Tibor Szemzo on the Meteo soundtrack, a record released just a year after Trance Balance. Given the proximity of their respective release date, it's no surprise to discover they're guided by the same inspirations. Though arriving at the end of the decade, Trance Balance feels like the kind of experimental record that feels characteristic of the mid 80s, in its worldly approach and electronic synthesis finding a sweet spot between My Life in the Bush With Ghosts, Mariah's legendary self-titled LP, Mark Freedman's Battery Sound and Arto Lindsay. Airless elastic basslines, mechanistic polyrhythms and vocal incantations contrast and align in playful discordance, making gestures towards downtown New York dancefloors as much as surrealist eastern European fantasias. It's a dizzying work, time stamped a little by its production but universal in the breadth of its scope and ambition. So there we go, another left turn back into the infinite 80s!