Pick

Shonky Time Zero

• Words: David Hemingway
• Label: Freak N Chic
• XLR8R Rating: 7/10

On the back cover of his debut album, Shonky (a.k.a. Olivier Ducreux) hugs a toy robot whilst beside him Lego bricks lay scattered across the floor. The sense that the Berlin-based Frenchman is perhaps being too literal in his evocation of collaboration between man and machine is compounded by track titles like “Nebula,” “Galactica,” and “Minor Planets” which, while thematically neat, are intended to highlight the spaciness, the other worldliness of his techno and house music. Nevertheless, this is really good stuff that, while clearly indebted to the likes of Kraftwerk and the Detroit triumvirate of Atkins, Saunderson, and May, is bloody-minded enough in its maintaining of a singular trajectory to remain utterly thrilling.