\n<\/p>\n
There is an enormous story that goes with the D.O.C. EP<\/a>, which is the final EP in a trilogy from Swiss DJ and producer Marco Repetto<\/a>. These tracks were originally composed between 1991 and 1992, culled from an archive that consisted of an estimated 146 hours of music on DATs handed over by Repetto to Michiel from label return_backspace<\/a> to sort through in a process that sounds more like archival research and preservation than traditional A&R. <\/p>\n Eventually return_backspace got it down to three EPs of three tracks each, released over two years with the May 2023 release of D.O.C.<\/em> marking the project\u2019s culmination. The format was purposeful \u2014 to release \u201ca well-balanced selection of tracks, divided over three extended plays, with each EP having its distinctive own feel and \u2018character,’\u201d according to return_backspace. \u201cEven at that early stage [when the tracks were first recorded], Marco\u2019s work was utterly versatile.\u201d <\/p>\n This is obviously a labor of love but also a rite of revival: Repetto is hailed by knowledgeable electronic music aficionados for that \u201cutterly versatile\u201d aesthetic that began when he was beating the ground as a punk rock drummer in the late 1970s and culminated something like 40 years later with 2019\u2019s Fables of Robotic<\/a> album that reached a new generation of fans, some wholly unfamiliar with his early works, drafts and variations of which evolved in captured time somewhere on those 146 hours of tape.<\/p>\n \u201cI was \u2018lonely\u2019 with my music,\u201d Repetto says, \u201cas no one seemed to understand what I was doing.\u201d That solitary isolation is most deeply felt on the first two EPs, New Era<\/a> and Adamha<\/a>, which fall into a dreamlike ambient haze at a moments notice between bouts of hedonistic full moon techno jams. The D.O.C.<\/em> EP, the last release, is the most polished and single-minded of the three. It\u2019s a sound that\u2019s of its time but, of late, of our time too.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me it felt extremely futuristic to work with drumcomputers, synthesizers and samplers,\u201d Repetto says. \u201c\u2018Sequencer\u2019 was like a magic word.\u201d These are obviously the thoughts of someone more emotionally tied to the music than any stranger will be, but I think some of that wide-eyed wonder and sense of adventure is locked in these tracks from Marco Repetto\u2019s vaults.<\/p>\n