Celebrate Imperfections With Dutch Producer Aleks’ “Ulterior Motive”

It’s a straightforward house cut, despite its name.

June 23, 2015

Rummaging around the internet for new electronic music today, it's easy to get lost in the multitudes. So many glossy one-offs sound flawless to the point where you wonder if a computer's passed the Turing test and taken up music production. However Aleks, a house producer based in Haarlem, Netherlands, seems to revel in the serendipity of working with analog equipment and allowing a track to sprawl itself out. Case in point: "Ulterior Motive," from his forthcoming EP, Low Definitions, is full of loose claps and densely layered tape loops, with subtle peaks and troughs to keep you moving.

"I like rawness and texture," Aleks told The FADER, "and especially imperfection—it’s what gives tracks character I think. But most of all I just see where sounds take me. There’s no general idea behind any of the tracks—it always takes its natural course. I play around a lot with different pads and filters until something just grabs me. Most tracks start off as ambient—and when I get the feeling right which could take hours—I decide on what the purpose of the track will be. ['Ulterior Motive' gets] the crowd going." Natural Sciences, a brand new record label in Manchester, will release Low Definitions, later this month (pre-order it here).

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Celebrate Imperfections With Dutch Producer Aleks’ “Ulterior Motive”