Dinky “Blind”
As boring as minimal got over the course of the last decade, the good stuff […]
As boring as minimal got over the course of the last decade, the good stuff still hasn’t lost its luster. The sounds of Dinky‘s last album, Anemik, were as wan and bloodless as those created by fellow Chilean Ricardo Villalobos, but Alejandra Iglesias’ talent manifested itself sneakily—she lashed those bits and bobs into a makeshift raft of percolating, spacious hits and scraps of her own voice. What could easily be a funkless marathon in another producer’s hands was full of organic surprises in Dinky’s, and that 2009 album stands with Margaret Dygas’ 2011 LP for Perlon as a severe-yet-seductive high point of the minimal movement. Dinky also hinted at her escape route from the moribund genre with the album’s last track, a cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You.” Embracing her pop ambitions, Dinky’s latest album for the Visionquest label, Dimension D, shifted the focus away from the details. Her second remix package to follow the album’s release is “Blind,” which features two remixes each from Prins Thomas and Hreno and The Mole.
Hreno and The Mole’s “MHMD Remix” almost closes the loop between Dinky’s recent output and her earlier material, shrinking the original’s cabaret-esque contours into a wriggling disco loop that—in fine Mole style—clocks in at a minimally varied, exhaustingly undiminished 10 minutes. In contrast, Prins Thomas’ “Diskomiks” is careful to preserve Dinky’s phrasing and smatterings of hand percussion; still, this is disco of the cosmic variety, and its zero-gravity introduction only leads us into a stratosphere of silvery synths. The EP’s protagonists swap roles for the final remixes: Prins Thomas’ dub deigns to touch down on terra firma, locking into a groove that’s not too distinct from Hreno and The Mole’s; the latter’s “MHMD Ambient Yacht Mix” proceeds with the same delicacy and focus as the earlier “Diskomiks,” but misses the drama.