The electronic duo Flight Mechanics\' debut EP Formed Light was born of a snow day last winter. Milwaukee\'s Sean Behling, currently of Antler Antennas, and Sheboygan producer Paul Duquesnoy took advantage of the day off to get started on the collaboration they\'d been talking about doing since they played together in the electro-fusion band 1881. Behling laid down the original drums and keyboards in his basement. From there, those live tracks were sampled and tweaked beyond recognition over the course of months, as the two producers traded them back and forth.
“I\'d basically work on a piece in my studio, then send him the session files, and he would have his way with them in his studio,” says Behling. “It was pretty exciting, because I\'d never knew what he\'d send back. If he didn\'t like what I wrote, it might just go into the trash. There were times where it was a little sad when something I wrote and had grown attached to got changed, but it was always really fun to hear what he\'d do to twist each track.”
The resulting four-song EP is much more reined-in than Antler Antennas\' cross-genre free-for-all, more solidly grounded in drum and bass conventions, with nods to Squarepusher and traces of Ratatat in some of the keyboard tones. They\'re never cluttered, but there\'s a lot going on in these songs, with their many rhythmic shifts and their ever-changing drum patterns.
“It\'s hard to even estimate the number of hours we spend re-working these tracks between the two of us,” Behling says. “It\'s pretty intricate stuff.”
You can stream Flight Mechanics\' Formed Light EP below or through the duo\'s Bandcamp page.
