jake mandell love songs for machines press

spin – april 2001

alienated by your iMac? jake mandell has found a spiritual escape hatch: If you can’t beat it, serenade it. between remixing kid606, imagining a new blip-hop, and dodging aphex twin comparisons, this berlin-via-minneapolis techno minimalist must have been seduced by his computer’s icy glare. here he programs love bugs galore. unlike the aggro penetrations of last year’s quondam current, love songs opts for shiatsu seduction, carefully targeting different electrogenous zones with synth beats that recall new order and depeche mode. "tender growth from random seed" may sound like a nature-film soundtrack, but it’s a field study in sensual glitch kitsch, while "the prince and the palm" equates banging a la howard stern with banging a la luigi russolo in music that’s clinically erotic. mandell collectivizes his ecstasty on "tragedy tears the triarch," a steady thrumming house-meets-electro groove that would have stirred up the roxy in ’81. young jake has found the soul in his machine, and even a little groove.

-jon caramanica

urb – april 2001

better known for his work on the boundaries of experimental electonics, jake mandell uses the fabricated romanticism of ‘80s synth pop for his third lp, love songs for machines. "the prince and the palm" is the would-be love child of OMD and Talk Talk, where hints of pre-industrial percussion patterns falter under the gossamer weight of angelic, if not wholly synthetic, melodic gusts. "the surf and the circus" is section 25, had they not fallen into that desperate pit of melancholy and spiraled down their own asses at the cost of the forceful harmonic thoughts brought here to fruition.

"undersea sanctuary" is the absurdity of robert smith’s the glove project, that weird Cure guitar element that could only be further blunted by massive amounts of ‘shrooms. here it’s done with female voices filtered through a vocoder instead of smith’s whiney tones. "two doses of diometic hexameter" is dolorous power, corruption, and lies-era new order, depressing in its mechanical invocation of confused guitar chords that lost their spirit too many years ago. sure, there are fantastic efforts more in line with voguish clicks and whirs that landed mandell an underappreciated album on force inc. last year, but the bulk of love songs revels in a period sadly lost on most of today’s cutting-edge musicians.

- heath k. hignight

xlr8r #48 (march 2001) –

jake mandell’s precocious talent produces both a third album and a somewhat more direct rhythmical approach to previous LPs for force inc and worm interface. The beginnings of love songs play remarkably straight for mandell, and it’s not until the middle of the album that he really stretches his legs and begins the amour proper, with wonderfully titled tracks like "divinity takes a dive" and "two doses of dimetic hexameter" displaying his remarkable ability to instil the funk into the most obtuse of rhythms. If you know mandell’s work, you’ll already be aware that it’s never an easy ride. In some ways you have to earn the rewards, but he has the grace to let us down gently, with the delightful melancholic repose of epilogue track (title of the album award goes to…) "archberserk in the dark."

-steve nicholls

alternative press – april 2001

IDM luminary expresses some computer love.

love songs for machines is an unabashed declaration of love to computers. In the liner notes, jake mandell describes struggling with the shift from the analog arts, where an artist could admit a passion for a favored brush, say or a stradivarius, to the digital realm, where computers are commonly seen as just another tool. As such, it’s an album that should be required listening for every critic that falls back on the cliché oppositions of human vs. machine, because mandell has succeeded in turning the glitches of DSP, the souring of detuned samples and the sweetness of synth pads into an arresting work of experimental pop music. "techno" or not, the structures, the harmonies, the humor and, above all, the sentimentality are all of a piece with those elements which make up so much of the pop music that our culture has seen fit to privilege as among the most "human" and immediate of expressions.

and it’s just plain gorgeous: for evidence, look no further than the shimmering mirage of vocal samples and crystalline tones conjured by "tender growth from random seed." no one style predominates here – there’s the tinny four-to-the-floor pulse of force inc. glitchy techno and the syncopated squelch of click-hop, but mandell’s compositions, all marked by colliding textures and rich tonalities, succeed largely on the basis of their independence from generic structures. Instead, as on the dense, interlocking layers of "the surf and the circus" or the shuddering kicks of "undersea sanctuary," mandell manages to exploit conflicting elements, creating a kind of elegantly lurching robot – patched together with software, ingenuity and a whole lotta love.

- philip sherburne

Kaktus #7

Trzeci album tego intrygujacego amerykanskiego artysty, tym razem dla nowojorskiej oficyny carpark. W jego imponujacej juz dzisiaj dyskografii, znajdziemy plyty dla tak renomowanych tloczni jak worm interface, pitch cadet, lucky kitchen, czy force inc. oczywiscie u nas najbardziej znany jest album "quondam current" dla tej ostatniej. Na najnowsza plyte wybrat mniej "techniczne" nagrania, bazujace na prostych, komputerowych, elektro-popowych dzwiekach przypominajacych czasy new order I human league. Te typowo rytmiczne kompozycje uzupetnia dawka bardzo przyjaznej easy elektroniki.

slawek pekala

Pitchforkmedia.com (2.22.01)

In order to bank the alluring promise of our pauseless why-wait-for-anything culture, we suffer a huge trade-off. Pop culture moves at such speed that artistic maturity has become a slur. The majority of consumers and record company executives are not willing to allow artists sufficient space and time to realize their unique visions. It really is all about the Benjamins. Who will know whether Jennifer Lopez has something insightful to say about post-Cold War America when all she gets to release is "Love Don't Cost a Thing," a blatant retread of Brandy and Monica's "The Boy is Mine?"

Electronic artists are more fortunate than their Entertainment Tonight-spotlighted peers in pop. At least within the electronic strands, musicians can ally themselves with art-music, a domain where Pantene'd popettes are few and far between. In this space, and over several releases, electronic artists can find their voice. Occasionally, an artist will bewilder us by seeming to have hit the ground running. Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works I still strikes me as a remarkably complete piece and doubly astounds when I remember that it was Richard James' debut album. Though Music Has a Right to Children gave the impression of coming out of nowhere, perfectly formed, the Boards of Canada worked their way through and discarded over 800 pieces before setting on the masterly 18 that comprise their debut's incontrovertible achievement.

But rather than hitting the ground running, or being born perfectly formed, Jake Mandell has preferred to grow up in public. His debut, Parallel Processes, though never plagiaristic, sees Mandell experimenting with templates and styles. The record, in hindsight, sounds a lot like Mandell challenging himself, and, in comparison to his third release, Love Songs for Machines, is a protein-algorithm-inspired workbench study, a series of successful, but ultimately unrevealing can-I-pull-this-off's.

Mandell's second album, Quondam Current-- recorded for the tough crowd-pleaser, Force Inc-- displays Mandell's competency to glitch and stomp with the technoscenti. The album's in harmony with Force Inc's mech-aesthetic and leaves me technically impressed, but no wiser as to what Mandell is about. Like the majority of Force Inc albums, the artist's personality is entirely suppressed and the culture-tectonics of implant-society and cyborg-body-politics are the only subjects.

Flipping over to yet another label, Carpark, Mandell now issues Love Songs for Machines and, for the first time, we can begin to appreciate him for who he is and what he has to say, rather than gasp at his emulation of Oscar Sala or a pneumatic drill. His third album is not one predicated on a display of technique. Though Love Songs for Machines supports a great deal of technical accomplishment, at no point is its goal to flaunt this prowess. He's got that out of his system. I agree that Mandell has skillfully sliced and diced the voices that populate "Tender Growth From Random Seed," but like the Boards of Canada's "Telephasic Workshop," that's not the reason for their inclusion. Each listener will have his or her own interpretation of what those looped syllables signify, but we can all agree that they lend a bewitching ambience to the jittering surface out of which they dance.

"From the Chestnut Parapet" is another Boards-indebted mood piece. More contemplative and eerie than the rest of the album, this track avoids the rarified, rune-skilled Enya-isms that trouble the otherwise intriguing "Divinity Takes a Dive." Far removed from such precious themes, "The Surf and the Circus" is dancefloor techno without the tribal stomp and the Brave New World pallor that clutter most examples of the style. "Tragedy Tears the Triarchy" could legitimately claim some descent from the Basic Channel/Hardwax collective, but its lineage is disputable due to Mandell's infusion of novel textural and melodic genetic material into the genome. Along similar lines, "Two Doses of Diometic Hexameter" reminds me of the odd melodic statements Mike Paradinas achieved under his µ-Ziq guise on In Pine Effect.

The unquestioned masterpiece of the album is "The Fragmented Icon," which, like the 3-D construction-netted Madonna and Child of the cover art, is sublime beauty, unraveled and reconstructed to an original design. The bassline echoes some Cabaret Voltaire and Richard H. Kirk releases, but the surrounding material references Funkstörung, Bola, and Aphex Twin without ever aping them. It's a pity that the track lasts for a mere three-and-a-half minutes before vanishing.

The album sounds less to me less like expressions of love for machines, and more like love for music and the highest of human aspirations, expressed through the deft use of machines. Mandell's chosen title and the explanatory essay in the booklet strike me as odd and rather disingenuous, as though he's embarrassed to have achieved such a successful transition to true musicianship. The record proves that Mandell is no longer subservient to technique and he no longer has to pay his dues to a tradition or guild. His two previous albums have schooled him how to use his machines. He has reached the transcendent point where he has the ability fulfill his aspirations. Like all great musicians past and present, Mandell can now begin to express himself without meaninglessly exercising his skills or performing aural mathematics like so many post-rock poseurs.

In this time when artists' names are no more than marketing identifiers (J-Lo, Posh Spice, Timo Maas), it's liberating to have the chance to follow a musician's development. I realize that Love Songs for Machines is not the final statement Mandell has to make. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to anticipate truly astounding things from him in the future.

-Paul Cooper rating 8.8

grooves #6

Having already sharpened his dancefloor chops with Quondam Current, Jake Mandell revisits the experimental sonorities of his earlier efforts with Love Songs for Machines, while keeping the thumping danceable elements intact. This seems like an odd project until one remembers that experimental dance music has always drawn inspiration from (and been defined in relationship to) music ostensibly more for the body: Detroit techno, 80’s hip hop and synthpop, etc. Mandell instinctively strikes a careful balance between beats for the feet and twists and turns for the mind, taking the first steps on a promising aesthetic path leading away from joyless intellectualism.

The fruits of this effort can be heard ten tracks in, on "The Princess Speaks of Love." Tentative, evocative pads chop back and forth, effects spring around without resolution. Then there is a whirligig, squealing turn on a dime, and the beat and bass clomp in with heavy shoes still scuffed from the dancefloor. Things grow more and more tense until a processed voice- until now just shreds of sound trapped in the immense machinery- breaks through at the end, sings an enigmatic lyric just once, like a goodbye, and vanishes. A portrait of the artist illuminated by monitor glow and dancefloor strobe both.

-Rob Geary

CMJ New Music Report Issue: 700 - Feb 05, 2001

Rarely does an album come along that breaks as many rules as Love Songs For Machines, the latest masterpiece from Minneapolis-born techno composer Jake Mandell. Unlike the music of most techno producers (all brawn and beat, little brains), Mandell's music is characterized by a meticulously-arranged assortment of obscure sounds and random rhythms. But although these tunes are only a stone's throw away from the hyper-intellectual offerings of Autechre and its ilk, the majority of this album is unapologetically geared toward the dancefloor: Mandell often peppers his IDM abstractions with straightforward techno kicks and sane melodic arrangements that keep the music from floating too far into the stratosphere. Love Songs For Machines makes a clear connection between the moody ambiance of Detroit techno and the alien attitude of the armchair army, and does so with the first truly brilliant collection of songs of 2001.
- M. Tye Comer

NOW TORONTO - JULY 12, 2001
JAKE MANDELL Love Songs For Machines (Carpark) Rating: NNN
The liner notes of Jake Mandell's third album contain a short essay
professing his love for computers as the embodiment of humanity. This and
the song titles might mislead listeners into thinking that this is a
high-concept techno album. Instead, we get glitchy, spastic electro-pop and
a mischievous sense of humour. Mandell makes techno for indie kids and has
been known to actually get them dancing when he plays live. His sound is
halfway between 80s kitch and and serious contemporary experimental
electronic music, raw but pretty. When he's not goofing around, he manages
to make some challenging, beautifully eerie music.
BENJAMIN BOLES

Dallas Observer – 2.15.01

It's perhaps the ultimate dilemma in art--once you successfully shake off the contrasts of your genre, effectively moving into the great unknown of the "avant-garde," what the hell do you do next? If you continue to produce work that conforms to some accepted definition of "experimental"--one being followed by every other member of your new future-looking fraternity--you end up churning out music more formulaic than your pop-minded former colleagues, only less appealing. The race to obscurity inevitably ends with someone bashing a badger wired with contact mics over a log and releasing it on a special-edition transparent seven-inch with a cover hand drawn by the "artist."

Or at least it has in techno. Jake Mandell, a Minneapolis native living in techno's current world headquarters, Berlin, started his electronic music career dashing out to its frontier as quickly as possible. With a background in classical music, he was uninterested in the strict formal constraints of purist techno: a metronomic bass drum line, an interlocking pattern of straightforward grooves that incites dancing, the exclusive use of analog music machines. His debut full-length, Parallel Processes, flouted those conventions at every turn--he used a computer, so the sounds were unmistakably digital and the fractured beats skittered about, refusing to settle in the orthodox 4/4 time-signature structure of techno.

But as evidenced by more prominent computer music cosmonauts such as England's Autechre, such outer-fringe explorations can become impenetrable to all but the artists themselves and a small coterie of listeners with the dancing inclinations of John Ashcroft. Perhaps Mandell saw this wall approaching, because Love Songs for Machines sees him turning back and playing with the traditions of the music he started in but never really adhered to himself. Here, the changes in each song unfold more slowly and subtly, and the rhythms evoke more immediate visceral reaction. The sound palette is still computer-rendered, so he gets a range of melody well outside the one offered by the usual synthesizer suspects. Making music that moves bodies, it turns out, requires a compositional sophistication that is worthy of an avant-gardist's attention--and the result is an album that hovers between radical experientialism and inviting pop music.

-darren keast

soundicate (march 2001) –

Jake Mandell, comme beaucoup de ces collègues, est un homme très occupé. Ces dernières années, il a multiplié les projets et remixes sur de multiples labels : Worminterface, Force inc, Beta Bodega, Schematic et " Love songs for machines " paru chez Carpark. Il est également à la tête du label Kodama où il sort des projets plus abstraits sous le pseudonyme de Jacob Mandell. À chacune de ces sorties, son style mute, passant de l’Electronica post-jungle la plus déstructuré à la Techno minimale bancale, le style change mais le son reste. Mandell possède sa touche reconnaissable entre toute, utilisant les outils de création sonore virtuels à leur maximum. Il obtient un univers sonore où le froid rencontre le chaud dans une joyeuse mixture qui n’appartient qu’a lui.

Pour sa deuxième sortie sur le petit label américain qui monte, la première étant le "Placekick EP" dans la jolie "Sports Series", Jake choisi d’explorer le côté romantique de l’Electronica. Le titre "Love Songs For Machines" illustre à merveille le contenu sonore de l’album. On retrouve avec grand plaisir les structures alambiquées et bancales du musicien cette fois-ci agrémentées de sonorités plus organiques, qui donnent un accent plus "popisant" à ces compositions. Tout d’abord, on note l’apparition de voix humaine, chose rare chez Mandell, apportant à des morceaux comme "Tender Growth From Random Seed" ou "Divinity Takes A Dive" une tonalité d’une mélancolie poignante. Ensuite, il s’est plus attardé sur les mélodies, moins déconstruites que d’habitude. Elles s’étendent lascivement sur ces vrillages rythmiques, prenant le temps de s’installer dans la tête de l’auditeur à l’instar d’un titre comme "From The Chestnut Parapet". Afin de séduire ces machines, il n’hésite pas à déterrer des clichés à la limite du New-Wave qu’il transcende avec une habilité déconcertante, rendant par la même occasion le silicium sensuel. Toute cette exploration romantico-numérique ne se fait pas au détriment d’une efficacité monstrueuse. En effet, une grande partie du track-listing est apte à démonter pièces par pièces n’importe quel dance-floor. Jake Mandell signe avec ce "Love Songs For Machines" son album le plus abouti, ajoutant par la même occasion une excellente référence de plus au catalogue du label Carpark, grand pourvoyeur de perles électroniques signées Marumari, Kid 606 ou So Takahashi.

Vous l’aurez compris, il serait dommage de passer à côté de ce petit bijou. Même si Carpark est un label peu distribué et difficile à trouver, l’investigation en vaut le coup. Pour en savoir plus sur Jake Mandell, n’hésitez pas à parcourir son interview prochainement sur Soundicate.
– malcom d.

Fakejazz.com (1.12.01)

Jake Mandell has proven that he can pull off complexity (Parallel Processes) and deceptive simplicity (Quondam Current) with equal production aplomb. Love Songs for Machines, a suite of sweet sonic somethings dedicated to his desktop's electronic array, aims for emotion--electronic music's most elusive character. Emotion, whose base metal is humanity, calls for caprice distinctly at odds with the robotic precision of techno's timekeeping. It can be achieved--see Mark Van Hoen's brilliant Playing with Time--but it requires a good measure of cleverness to do it well. Kid606, taking on the same challenge with PS I Love You, opted for an amorphous, open-ended matrix of DSP soundhacking sprawl. While Mandell and Kid606 correspond in their taste for wordy, charmingly childish track titles, the former finds a more concrete compromise than the Kid's in the plastic elasticity of pop. Creatively complicated beats tick off the requisite 4/4 floor count with a touch of speaker-hopping edginess. '80s-vintage synths serve up toothsome, sometimes over-sweetened sounds. Like emotions, Mandell's melodies are a messy lot. They often gush in smitten gasps, moseying around a track's litter of sampled shrapnel and tautly strung basslines. Each cut is kept within the pop form's four-minute constraints. "The Surf and the Circus" and "Two Doses of Diometic Hexameter" borrow as freely from the hook-happy likes of Depeche Mode and OMD as they do from the sensual pulse of Detroit purism. "The Prince and the Palm," with its lurching rhythms and meandering refrain of pillowy synth, comes across like a rubato remix of "Mr. Roboto." Deeper cuts such as "Divinity Takes a Dive" and the dub-wracked "The Princess Speaks of Love" incorporate shards of vocal samples and ever-trickier skeins of digital FX, climaxing in the expert techno craft of "The Fragmented Icon." Love Songs winds down with an inscrutably titled pair of "Epilogue" tracks, neither of which adds much to the experience beyond pleasant atmospheric afterthoughts, but the bulk of the album is impressive in its careful balance of sentiment and economy.

- gil gershman

other music february 1, 2001

Mandell's new IDM takes a turn away from his progressively drudgy
material, and "Love Songs" rises with a lighter approach than usual.
Interlaced muffled rhythms and disappearing tones, anchored with
a steady thrum -- typical, but still nice. Even a few with vocal samples,
which spice the mix up considerably. Techno made of sugar threads.
-robin edgerton

Tandem news (canada) 2.5.01

Minneapolis techno producer Jake Mandell expresses his love for music machines on his third full length CD (the first on an American label). Classically trained as a pianist, he had more fun on the computer and now writes his own sound synthesis and composition software. He was featured amongst the electronic avant garde on Mille Plateaux’s Clicks & Cuts compilation but he tends to be more melodic than the digital processing glitch merchants. Mandell distinguishes his house and techno-based tunes with references to the pure pop melodies of the new wave era, both the optimistic New Order-isms of "The Prince And The Palm" and the cut-up whimsy of the Severed Heads-style "Tender Growth From Random Seed." And like Plaid or Mu-Ziq his tracks are multi-layered feasts – systems music for the concurrently minded.

-chris twomey

the daily page – february 9, 2001

Jake Mandell is a practitioner of what I like to call "geektronica"--that Aphex-spawned branch of electronic music where the ideology of techno merges with the avant-garde conceptualism of Riley and Eno. Though he hasn't yet achieved the kind of crossover recognition that Autechre and Boards of Canada enjoy, Mandell has earned global acclaim within the close-knit, bespectacled army of Internet hacks who compose geektronica's fan base. A Minnesota native and former UW-Madison student, Mandell has established his twitchy, computer-based anti-dance music through appearances on many different labels and high-profile compilations.

His fifth full-length CD is his warmest and most accessible release to date, no doubt because he has--in his own mind, anyway--broken through an artistic barrier. Mandell confesses his love for computers, and in reaching an amiable symbiosis with his machine, unlocks the gate that had previously imprisoned the more emotional aspirations of his music. A more cogent theory may be that he's reached back for inspiration to a less myopic (and more naively charming) period in electronica's evolution. For this album is, in fact, Jake's ode to the roots of synthesized pop music. The heart of Love Songs is in the tiny fragments of proto-synthpop melody--à la Soft Cell, the Human League or Depeche Mode.

-al ritchie

theticket.be – (april 2001)

Niet alleen de hele reutemeteut van het Duitse parlement verhuisde de laatste maanden van Bonn naar de nieuwe, Duitse hoofdstad Berlijn maar ook artiesten en muzikanten vinden er soelaas. Het Oostenrijkse experimentele label Rhiz verkaste in januari om politieke redenen van Wenen naar Berlijn. De Amerikaanse technomeute rond Kit Clayton en Safety Scissors sind auch Berliner geworden... Jake Mandell vervoegde in november zijn labelcompanen en verruilde de koude Minneapolis winter tijdelijk voor de al even koude Berlijnse winter. De stap van de VS naar de BRD is niet zo immens! Mandell kon altijd op meer bijval rekenen in Europa dan in thuisland Amerika waar hij buiten een IDM-incrowd slechts een marginale bekendheid geniet. Na releases op het Britse Worm Interface, het Duitse Force Inc bracht hij zonet een derde full cd uit op het New Yorkse Carpark Records (Marumari, So Takahashi, Safety Scissors, enz.). 'Love Songs for Machines' is de achtste en beste Carpark release tot nu toe en laat gedeeltelijk een nieuwe Mandell horen. Hij experimenteert hier op een opmerkelijke manier met computerstemmen. Een weg die hij al insloeg op de 'Coney Island' track (in een door Instant Brownie geremixte versie), het laatste nummer van zijn tweede cd 'Quondam Current', maar die hier dus verder bewandeld wordt. Tracy Tabbery van Instant Brownie mag opnieuw een vocale bijdrage leveren voor het sensuele, orgastische 'Divinity Takes a Dive'. De gortdroge, knetterende beats en complexe ritmes van 'Parallel Processes' en 'Quondam Current' maken plaats voor een subtielere aanpak die ongetwijfeld Europees van aard is. De steriele computers krijgen hier zowaar een injectie menselijke warmte toegediend. Ook nieuw is dat Mandell hier veel opener en duidelijker is over zijn voorbeelden. De exemplarische opener 'Magik Cirkuits' bijvoorbeeld is pure New Order ten tijde van 'Perfect Kiss'. 'The Princess Speaks of Love' speelt leentjebuur bij Kraftwerk ten tijde van 'Computer World'. De Europese invloeden van new wave en de elektronische muziek van het begin van de jaren tachtig laten zich ook op de rest van het album gelden. Laat twintigste-eeuwse dansmuziek wordt vermengd met de mogelijkheden van de 21ste eeuwse computertechnologie. 'Love Songs for Machines' is nog maar eens een uitmuntend Mandell album dat tegelijk sexy, gesofisticeerd en uitermate dansbaar klinkt. Niet slecht voor een zelfverklaarde loner die op dit album eindelijk aan outing doet door zijn liefde te bekennen voor. computers. Als 'The Princess Speaks of Love' geen hit wordt in de clubs voor beter dansmuziek dan weten we het ook niet meer. Mandell zal zich zo te zien wel goed thuisvallen op het oude continent. Uitkijken maar naar zijn eerste echte Europese album!

- peter wullen

de-bug 2.14.01

Liebeslieder des Wahlberliners Mandell an seine Maschinen...kann

Liebe merkwürdig klingen. Knarzend knispelig bis straight ohne viel

nach links und rechts zu schauen erzaehlt uns Herr Kodarma hier wie

das Leben mit den Maschinen so ist, wenn das Powerbook wirklich auf

dem Kuschelkissen schläft, das Mischpult den Anrufbeantworter steuert

und auf dem Telefon Samples brutzeln. Von mitreissend bis ratlos

schiesst einen Mandell auf die Achterbahn, und streckenweise bin ich

mir nicht sicher, ob es nicht besser wäre, diese Maschinen mal auf

Urlaub zu schicken, ein Gefühl das jeder kennt, dessen G4 das ganze

Studio mit Netzbrummen versorgt und die Techniker am Telefopn nur

müde lachen und von bekannten Problemen reden. Von spannend bis

langweilig alles dabei, file under Techno.

-thaddi herrman **-****

weekly dig 2.14.01

with the release of his acclaimed full-length, parallel processes, on worm interface in 1998, minnesota native Jake Mandell burst on the IDM "scene" and, given his fractured beats and cool melodies, the requisite comparisons to Aphex Twin and Autechre flowed like wine. Since then, Mandell has sought to break out of the IDM mold, releasing a full-on techno album, last year’s somewhat disappointing quondam current and now love songs for machines, his first full-length on New York’s excellent Carpark records. On love songs, mandell seems to have one foot on the dance floor and one in the living room, creating music that is a kind of bouncy techno/IDM hybrid. Few of the tracks are love songs, at least in the sense that they are overtly lyrical or sentimental, with possible exceptions being the lovely, breathlessly stuttering "tender growth from random seed" and the devotional "archberserk in the dark." Yet, if he doesn’t bring synthetic flowers and digital poetry, mandell does show his machines a really, really good time. indeed, love songs is relentlessly upbeat, from dance-floor friendly tracks like "undersea sanctuary" and "tragedy tears the triarchy" to the funky "two doses of diometic hexameter." Even the closing pair of hymn-like tracks that make up the disc’s epilogue don’t rain on mandell’s love parade.

-s. boll

minneapolis twin cities city search – 4.15.01
Jake Mandell, a Minneapolis homeboy who now rests his head in Berlin, punches and programs smart electronica for the non-electronically inclined. Atmospheric "Love Songs for Machines" is a paean to '80s-era New Wave ala Depeche Mode and New Order that doesn't leave you longing for moodily minimalist lyrics or temperamental singers. Spryly jumping from one loopy track to another, Mandell goes out of his head to exercise his self-professed computer lust as crazily as someone who has been reading coded commands all day long. He then processes his expression into a dozen-plus tracks that are entirely user- and dance floor-friendly. A must-listen-to if you're switched-on by electronic music.

—Scott Henkemeyer

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

pitch weekly – june 7, 2001

On Love Songs for Machines, electronic musician Jake Mandell identifies his computer as the object of his affection. Did he not see 2001: A Space Odyssey? Did he not see The Matrix? If Mandell had seen the early '80s films Heartbeeps and Electric Dreams from the short-lived computer woo genre, he would know that these kinds of stories always end in tragedy, or at least result in truly horrible flicks.

-richard bishop

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