{"id":746090,"date":"2026-07-06T08:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746090\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T08:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:11:12","slug":"topdown-dialectic-false-lp-a-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746090\/","title":{"rendered":"Topdown Dialectic: False LP A Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The jig is up. The act behind the most bewildering ambient techno of the past 15 years is not a shadowy syndicate or group of evil geniuses. It\u2019s actually just Izaak Schlossman, who started the project back in Seattle as part of a crew called Aught<\/a>. The proliferation of aliases, and the artist\u2019s eventual move to San Francisco\u2014where he started the synth-pop band Loveshadow\u2014caused lingering confusion. No one could decide where Topdown Dialectic<\/a> was based, or how many people it was, or if people were even making the music, instead of algorithms or bots. (Past press materials have referred to the project as \u201celectronic designs\u201d made using \u201csoftware strategies,\u201d and more than once I\u2019ve been told by people in the know: \u201cTopdown Dialectic is a process.\u201d) But now the 20,000 r\/TheOverload<\/a> followers who couldn\u2019t sleep at night can rest easy: We found our guy.<\/p>\n

For those not in the know, Topdown Dialectic was originally a faceless project putting out clear cassettes of washed-out dub techno in clear cases with absolutely no packaging or info. The tracks were all exactly five minutes long, which lent further mystery, as if they\u2019d been produced by some arcane assembly line. As the project evolved, it broke off from the Aught collective, eventually landing on Brian Foote\u2019s Peak Oil<\/a> label, where Topdown Dialectic became a (relative) hot commodity. The records sold out in a matter of days, and nerdy online chatter escalated with each repress.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

And why did people care so much? Because, like the presentation, the music said as much as it didn\u2019t say. Topdown Dialectic tracks are like film negatives exposed to light for a split second: murky and hard to place, with once-familiar shapes bled out into blobs. You might get the occasional techno beat, chord stab, or even vocal sample. There\u2019s something intoxicating about not knowing what you\u2019re listening to, about only catching snippets of familiar sounds, like branches and leaves caught in river rapids. The new LP takes that sense of dissolution to a whole new level, more impressionistic and bewitching than before, with barely there rhythms that randomly surface and disappear.<\/p>\n

This lengthy 2xLP blends archival material, recorded between 2013 and 2016, with more recent cuts. Despite its grab-bag approach, False LP A follows the trend of each Topdown release being weirder and more reduced than the last. Those looking for leftfield techno bangers might be disappointed with the opener, which feels ghostly and dissipated even by Topdown standards. Every once in a while a crow calls, but there\u2019s not much structure to it, with the sounds listlessly bouncing off the walls imposed by the five-minute runtimes instead of cohering into a rhythm.<\/p>\n

As False LP A lumbers to life, more things happen: On \u201c03,\u201d huge basslines offer a reminder of the project\u2019s origins in kinda-sorta dance music. \u201c05\u201d is deconstructed dub techno, as vocal sounds gasp and burp in the midst of all the washed-out digital detritus, and on \u201c10,\u201d a string melody that sounds a whole lot like P\u00e9p\u00e9 Bradock<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDeep Burnt\u201d wanders into the fuzzy frame. The little bit of slap bass from Vol. 2<\/a> makes an incredibly brief appearance on \u201c12,\u201d and the way the rhythm repeats on \u201c11\u201d reminds me of a basketball being dribbled in slow motion. The slightest details, or the smallest bits of structure, are what stick out\u2014what can feel like an amorphous ooze of nothingness suddenly snaps into place thanks to a rhythmic rattle or jagged vocal sample. It\u2019s almost like a game: a Where\u2019s Waldo for recognizable sounds in an otherwise slippery sonic ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The jig is up. The act behind the most bewildering ambient techno of the past 15 years is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[776,74,777],"class_list":["post-746090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-albums","tag-technology","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}