The sounds that Hungarian musician Gábor Lázár can pull out of state-of-the-art synths and programming are often fascinating and can result in a highly entertaining listening (and dancing) experience. With albums like Crisis of Representation, Unfold, and The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making (his 2015 collaboration with Mark Fell), Lázár has carved out a unique artistic space with his futuristic and often maddeningly playful techno soundscapes. Now signed to Planet Mu, Lázár is back with Source, an album that sees him continuing along the same path, which is somewhat problematic.
The main issue here is redundancy. Most of the songs on Source follow a specific template — twitchy avant-garde synth pieces described proudly in Lázár’s press materials as “seizure-inducing futurist electronica”, often latching on to a specific figure and hammering it into the ground for several minutes. In terms of fidelity, it sounds fantastic; all the glitches, edges, and stuttering beats sound crystal clear and are executed flawlessly. But they often come across as kernels of an idea that would greatly benefit from more layering. The album’s first three songs, “Source”, “Stream”, and “Phase”, all contain the same playful combination of robotic funk and jittery, sci-fi sonic patches. “Phase”, for its part, tends to goose the album along with a faster tempo, resulting in a refreshing break in the monotony.