Foxconn/Trios is a previously unreleased work originally recorded by d'Eon in 2012 during d'Eon's involvement with the Hippos in Tanks label. The first eight (of nine) tracks roll, stab, and skip through d'Eon's arsenal of sounds, presenting a more singular vision than d'Eon's previous releases. Their nearest contemporaries can be found in the studies of Mark Fell, post-Oversteps Autechre, late-period Oneohtrix Point Never, and the work of Lorenzo Senni. In d'Eon's words, the tracks freely and irregularly travel both forward and backward in MIDI-time. By putting together small arrangements using low sample-rate soundfonts in a tracker, and by writing short loops that are legible both forwards and backwards, the MIDI information can be traversed in any arbitrary direction at any arbitrary intervals and still be harmonically and contrapuntally sound. Ordinary rhythmic patterns are inherently legible regardless of the firing order of events because of a snare's inherent role as the up beat and a kick's as the down beat. If all notes in a phrase and all chords in a progression work equally well with their neighbors before them and their neighbor after, the direction of the clock is irrelevant. If those conditions are met, a 32-bar, two- three- or four-chord pattern with a single melody is easily made into a fully through-composed piece of music that could continue for hours without any pattern repetition at all. The many facets of the sound begin to unfold at the end, when the ninth and final track, Foxconn II, leaves the album's dominant technique behind and rewrites the material into an instrumental R&B track. Though d'Eon uses the same method throughout the first eight tracks, the simultaneous occurrence of complex harmonic progressions produces a plethora of moods and reveals d'Eon's ability to combine the radically novel and original with the familiar and more tangible. d'Eon cinematically takes elements from the past and, with an elegant violence, rapidly animates them into the future, shaping the path toward what's to come. This is the third release on Kuedo and Joe Shakespeare's Knives label. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Artwork by Tobias Madison.
