Otherworldly techno-scape

Tekhenu is a primal EDM record by the Allegorist, the moniker of Berlin-based producer Anna Jordan. Tekhenu is the Ancient Egyptian word for the tall stone pillars the Greeks would call obelisks. For Jordan, a self-described “holistic, soundscape storyteller,” the title represents unity, since this architectural structure has fascinated and been adopted by many different cultures. Jordan’s music similarly taps into a deep and common sense of mystery and expansiveness, but doesn’t shape this feeling into anything as defined as those Egyptian monuments. 

The opener “Whispers of the Wind” starts off with a quiet, slightly eerie electronic hum, like background noise people living in a space craft would have to learn to live with, before a wordless chant ensues. The vocals are reminiscent of recreations of choral music from the ancient world made by historians. They have an otherworldly and ambivalent quality:  melancholic and celebratory, lonely and communal, improvised and ritualistic. This isn’t how wind sounds breezing through city streets, but how Wind sounds personified in an old allegory. Jordan’s harmonies are pitched up and down and evoke a pantheon of spirits. As the record shifts from ambient to danceable, the digital manipulation of her voice gets more radical and synthetic. 

As one might expect, the compositions don’t so much develop and resolve as rise and recede. When they’re working, it’s achieved by overdubbing layers of mellifluous wailing and whimpering, chopping the vocals into short segments and looping them so they sound frenzied. Adding a rumbling kick drum and turning up beats made of distorted clattering louder than seems advisable, simulating what it must be like to be approached by a massive animal (that’s the title track.) Basic techniques, but effective: throw in more voices and a pulse, make everything louder, then take everything away. 

The heart of the record is simply Jordan’s facility and ear for eccentric vocalizing, and the other gestures she employs that don’t just boost the scale and intensity of that vocalizing are largely non-constructive. The cinematic strings and drones generally come off as paint-by-numbers profundity (though on “Trees of Peace” the glissandos seem alive.) The more complex percussion doesn’t stand out. And the instrumental motifs tend to be inarticulate— the three-note melody on “Inner Dialogue” is particularly crude and hard to listen to for very long. 

Tekhenu has Anna Jordan’s abstract and haunting singing style going for it. But the epic techno production clichés diminish this selling point. There’s power in the essence of this music waiting to be unleashed by more imaginative arrangements.