New Jersey-born Ali Berger is a drum machine specialist and low-key US electronic music standby, now based in Pittsburgh after spending the 2010s in Boston and Detroit. His catalog of original music runs deep, with over 60 releases on his Trackland label and EPs on imprints like Spectral Sound and Sequencias, all resulting from a lovingly-cultivated studio approach which respects improvisation as a spiritual practice. Here with this sublime release on Scissors and Thread, Serious, Berger collects tracks "from the last three years, plus 0221 (Serious Mix) from 2018", portraying the pursuit of an art form (techno, house) that demands that one take oneself seriously, whilst also periodically calling that sense of self-seriousness into question. As stated by Berger, there is a sense of deep melancholy that runs throughout the record, whether on the watery functions of 'Tape Jam (Pt. 2)' or the sparse synth-keyed movements of 'A New World To Forget'; they seem to reflect the feeling of happily pensive dog days, of arriving at new insights that wouldn't have been discovered had one not endured them.
