Strategy

Strategy

A Cooler World

Constellation Tatsu

***Portlander Paul Dickow, as Strategy, presents his latest album— A Cooler World. Fascinated by the unfamiliar limitations and inherent playability of a hand-me-down, 1989 model sampling keyboard, he played these pieces by hand, mostly abandoning the sequencer driven framework of sampling based music; he plays the sampler here the way a guitarist approaches the guitar. A Cooler World is a deep dive into glacial, pensive soundscapes that navigate the boundaries between experimental, ambient, and dance music. The pieces unfold with deliberate intention, expressed in a sound vocabulary that originates in the futurism of ambient techno, yet they open to the serendipitous outcomes of his instrumental experimentation. One of his few albums that fully commits to ambience, with this new album, everything is slowed down, gesturing towards stillness, and transformed into something otherworldly under a blanket of snow. Paul has released records as Strategy on Peak Oil, Kranky, and so many others. Prolific and motivated, Paul crafts his music to fill unanswered musical riddles and unexplored rabbit holes he discovers in his capacities as experimenter, record collector, and DJ.

Strategy

The Wet Room

Community Library

***For his 20th album, Strategy set out to unite divergent interests into a thematically cohesive set geared equally to headphone immersion or sound system endurance tests. A sequel to the 2015 LP Seeds of Paradise (Idle Hands), The Wet Room starts where that album concludes, both figuratively (a shared perspective from satellite orbit) and literally (playing them in order reveals a seamless continuum). Under the broad umbrella of chill-out—heady, imaginative electronic music that evokes eddies of ecstatic wonder and mystery—The Wet Room unites syrupy bass workouts, generative freeform bubblers, captured freak transmissions, and dubbed-out mixing board sessions into a purposeful, yet liquid, choreography. Strategy’s take on the genre might appear antithetical: uneasy soundbites would seem to be at odds with the gravitational pull to escapism. Strategy weaves these contradictions together and invites listeners to draw their own conclusions. Like all Strategy albums, this merits deep and repeated listening, when those with patience will find themselves rewarded with buried secret messages, nods to lost futures, and sonic ‘easter eggs.'

Strategy

Graffiti In Space

Constellation Tatsu

***Releasing under the moniker Strategy, Portlander Paul Dickow’s latest album explores the space of dub techno, extending beyond the genre and making it his own.

Strategy

Dub Mind Paradigm

Khaliphonic

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  PAUL DICKOW aka STRATEGY is a musical polymath with a signature sound derived from his immersion in hardware-based electronic music. He has spent close to two decades traveling freely through house, techno, rave, noise, ambient, and sounds more difficult to categorize. Strategy’s sound is inimitable because it is literally built by hand—his hands. Through all of this sonic journeying, including multiple full length releases, a constant has been his love of reggae and dub, yet somehow a proper dub album has never emerged—until now. After two much-loved 7” singles on ZamZam—to say nothing of dubwise excursions on Idle Hands, Shockout, Peak Oil, 100% Silk and more - “Dub Mind Paradigm” is the fulfillment of a clear, simple goal. "I set out to make a full set of dub tracks good enough to make an album—something that had always eluded me-- and it worked, finally. A simple exercise in seeing if we could launch the capsule to orbit Planet Reggae and make it home again.” Reaching Planet Reggae, the album explores analog caverns of dubwise at all tempos, from the 80s to 140, full of the ghosts of ancient and future technologies, glimmering shards of hope among heaps of folly, ruin and rubble. Music fans with crates deeper than the contemporary will find shades of Wackies, Firehouse, Unity Sound, Burial Mix and more, but only winks and nods… no one sounds like Strategy, and Strategy sounds like no one. Edition of 700 copies. Very...

Strategy

Pressure Wassure

Peak Oil

***Portland’s STRATEGY’s impressive 15 year plus discography rests on his ability to reference disparate music forms whilst making them sound entirely and distinctly his own. Whether crystalline dub, cerebellum-tingling ambient, atavistic post-punk or two steps beyond, Strategy has remade these all in his inimitable image. On Pressure Wassure, he not only plunders the fertile bounty of early ‘90s UK hardcore, he eviscerates it’s taut snares, bowel shaking bass and Dionnysian spirit, reimagining that eras ecstasy enlightened explorations for contemporary dancefloors, whilst sprinkling in neon p-funk flourishes, deft bassline deconstructions and the sheer murder of once familiar samples. In the span of just four devastating tracks, Strategy offers up supple, devastating pressure. Pressed in an edition of 300 copies with hand-assembled, label-bankrupting red flocked covers.  

Strategy

Boxology

100% Silk

The breadth of bass and rhythm imagineerings devised weekly by Portland machinist Paul Dickow is as invigorating as it is overwhelming – some cups run dry and some flow forever apparently. More than a decade in and Strategy's strategies only continue to pinwheel and proliferate, as showcased on his latest capsule collection, Boxology, which swirls through slinky sunrise house ("Panorama," "The Mink"), acid-splashed funktronix ("The Works," "Drag It Through The Garden"), jazzy Detroit shuffles ("A Secret," "Planet Of Jazz"), and airy dancefloor escalators ("Tomorrow May Never Come"). Throughout, Dickow wields a light touch, allowing each concoction to fizz, flow, and ferment before queuing up the next hardware pattern or pitch-bent synth hook. The fact that the bulk of these pieces were road-tested at west coast parties over the last couple years helps explain their fluidity and sneaky footloose agenda. Also worth mentioning/praising: for a dude this deep in the game this is some seriously un-cynical music. Who else writes electro-house jams about their hot dog condiment preferences? NOT ENOUGH. Mastered by Josh "Alter Echo" Derry. Edition of 100.

Strategy

Boxy Music

100% Silk

PDX hardware vet Paul Dickow aka "Strategy of Cascadia" has been channeling the depths of dub, house, acid, and similarly circuit-bent rhythm voyages for approaching two decades now, issuing sides through a universe of illustrious labels: Kranky, Further, Field Hymns, Endless Flight, Idle Hands, Peak Oil, Boomarm Nation, etc. His 100% Silk debut, Boxy Music, fuses five of his most dynamic recent forays through kraut-tech, dancehall piano house, and futurist dub into one unified slab of funked electronic wizardry. A pioneering west coast force of multi-faceted avant-electricity.

Strategy

Future Rock

Kranky

***PAUL DICKOW’s second full length for Kranky and third as STRATEGY. Future Rock focuses Strategy's diverse interests into a single point, while still drawing directly from the dense, shimmering sonic language established on his previous Drumsolo’s Delight. Based on a refined studio process that incorporates multi-tracked live instrumentation, archaic synthesizer equipment, archived recordings of improvisations and band practices, digital sound design, and sound of nonmusical origin, the album is a polyglot solution of genres. Musical quotations, discrete sonic jokes, and skewed musicological impressions are blended into a dreamlike, impressionistic musical composite which confounds and compounds music's past, present, and future. A gauzy, vibrating curtain of sound, much like the one that made Drumsolo's so distinctive, ties together all the songs as do the signature Wurlitzer electric piano and old-school spring reverb. “...the unexpected musical aphrodisiac of the year.”—Mundane Sound

Strategy

Drumsolo's Delight

Kranky

***The second album STRATEGY album from EMERGENCY, NUDGE, and FONTANELLE member PAUL DICKOW, and his most thematic to date. Seven tracks that wire together Dickow's programming and performing experience via a hodgepodge of table top electronic, computers, and realtime musicianship, marrying subtle rhythms with discreet ambience.