Review: John Tejada - Signs Under Test

Photo: John Tejada

Seasoned LA producer John Tejada has been a longstanding favourite in the electronic underworld. Starting out in the late nineties, his refined, punchy take on reduced techno, tech house and minimal has only bettered with age, with each passing album seeing him push his sound from the wickedly abstract (Logic Memory Centre) to the shimmering tech house showcased in 2011's Parabolas.

For his tenth studio LP Signs Under Test, Tejada goes back to basics to produce an album as beguiling as it is engaging. Stream it below.

From the first track, floating keyboard lines wash over crisp beats in a beautifully laid back start to the record. For this album, Tejada built everything from the ground up, using hardware synths and a predominantly analogue set up to pen his compositions.

The results are immediately there to witness - from the outset there is a definite warmth to his production that in the past hasn't been something necessarily associated with the Californian auteur.

There are murkier, sleazier cuts in the album ('y O why') and chunkier, bass heavy beasts ('Beacht'), but it's when he lets his superb sense of melody and lightness of touch take centre stage that he harvests his most impressive results. 

He switches up beat patterns and styles throughout - 'Vaalbara' employs eighties style bass arps with super crisp 808 drums that fall somewhere in between the 'Drive' Movie Soundtrack and early Nathan Fake, blending techno and classic electro with significant skill. There are even nods to old skool IDM and trance thanks to touches of sun-kissed bliss in tracks like 'Cryptochrome' and 'Endorphins'.

His ability to limit himself to the bare essentials whilst creating tunes greater than the sum of their parts, dare we say it, gives the record an almost timeless quality that will keep you zoned in right through to its funk laden, cinematic finale.

Expertly crafted and very unique to him, John Tejada has succeeded in breathing emotion into a machine inhabited world, realising a record that will be appreciated in the club as much as it will in the comfort of your own armchair.

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