Population One – Theater Of A Confused Mind

Artist: Population One
Title Of Album: Theater Of A Confused Mind
Year Of Release: 2014
Label: Rush Hour Recordings / RHM 013
Genre: Techno
Quality: MP3, Vinyl
Bitrate: 320 kbps
Total Time: 00:45:21
Total Size: 103 mb

Tracklist:
01. “Out Of Control”
02. “Code Urgent”
03. “For Only You”
04. “Battle For Space”
05. “Inner City Circus”
06. “All Together”
07. “My Own Shadow”
08. “All Of A Sudden”

Under the Population One codename, Detroit citizen,Terrence Dixon, has realised some of his most vivid, esoteric portals to the Motor City mindset. ‘Theater Of A Confused Mind’ is Dixon’s 2nd album in this mode and marks a timely return to Rush Hour twenty years after his debut album, ‘Unknown Black Shapes’, and the ‘Hippnotic Culture’ 2LP, whose ‘Rush Hour’ track inspired our company’s name.

In both the literal and figurative sense of the album’s title – theatre as a space for performance or an operating table, and equally in terms of psychogeography – ‘Theater Of A Confused Mind’ plays out an affected Afro-futurist narrative over eight tracks of haunting and furtive sci-fi techno. It’s riddled with cryptic connotation, systemic from the track titles to its deft, subtle mix down, all drawing upon the city’s emotions, industrial architextures and post-industrial panoramas to better express its sense of soul.

Between opener ‘Out Of Control’, where Dixon is the voice-in-Detroit’s-head, a dark interpreter on a dérive whispering to himself “Detroit, Out of Control/As I Walk Through The Mists Of Detroit/And You Don’t Know What We Be”, and through to the mind-blowing sci-fi projections of closer ‘All Of A Sudden’, it renders a unique perception of Detroit’s enduring export. Tracing circuitry like grid-iron avenues, Dixon deviates down back alleys, through warehouses and across mental space, divining the ghosts of jazz in the coiled double bass of ‘For Only You’, or long lost SOS transmissions in the tribal patterns of ‘Code Urgent’, whilst the prickling electro of ‘Battle For Space’ condenses that fractured flux at the album’s core, and the kaotic harmonies of ‘My Own Shadow’ encapsulate a Kafkaseque sense of raving paranoia.

In light of recent news that Terrence is set to retire from making music, the already incredible ‘Theater Of A Confused Mind’ is imparted with an ever more impending sense of gravity. It’s little short of Population One’s magnum opus, and should be treated with due respect.