Jake 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. [...] 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.
(Soundicate)
Hij experimenteert hier op een opmerkelijke manier met computerstemmen. [...] De steriele computers krijgen hier zowaar een injectie menselijke warmte toegediend [...] 'Love Songs for Machines' is nog maar eens een uitmuntend Mandell album dat tegelijk sexy, gesofisticeerd en uitermate dansbaar klinkt.
(The Ticket)
[...] an impressive example of new minimal techno. Minimalism provides an ideal framework upon which to hang convoluted computer techniques. The album constructively combines the ossature of minimal rhythms with the potential of advanced software to create simple and intricate sound plexuses [...]
(ForcedExposure)
[...] 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. [...] reminds me of the odd melodic statements Mike Paradinas achieved under his µ-Ziq guise on In Pine Effect. [...] 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.
(Pitchfork)
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.
(FakeJazz)
[...] toward the Aphex/Autechre axis of things electronic [...]. this is "intelligent" dance music in the best sense-complicated and ever-shifting without losing sense of propulsive elements. [...] Mandell's strength in beat programming is making it multi-tiered: compare the effect of running a little parasitic roll over a funky beat to the locked-groove monotony of much of current drum n' bass beats.
(Grooves Mag)

Mandell makes it seem like the 80's are really not at all gone, as he revitalizes the magic of Front 242 or of the Revolting Cocks' brutal disco beats and bass links, but in delightful way with some spastic click & cut intermezzos, all with an engineer's accuracy.
(Tamizdat, Wilsonic Festival 2001)

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