Review
Genre and Mood
Alec Troniq and Gabriel Vitel made Faces for the club. Discogs files the EP it comes from under house and tech house, styles built on a steady pulse and long, gradual development rather than verses and choruses, and the track is long enough to work that way. Hypnotic and groovy is what those styles aim for; the length tells you it was made for the middle of a night, not for the radio.
Song Summary
Faces is the second track of The Aviating, a six-track EP that the two Dresden musicians wrote and produced together and released on the German label Broque in November 2015, under the catalogue number brq 108. It runs six minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The EP around it ranges from the closing miniature Message To Frank, under two minutes, to Old Tortures at almost nine.
Musical Breakdown
No published review describes Faces section by section, so this review gives the frame rather than a map. A house or tech house track of this length usually starts and ends in a way a DJ can mix, develops by adding and removing layers over a steady kick, and saves its few big events for moments when the groove steps aside. Listen for where Faces follows that pattern and where it does not.
Concepts in Focus
The foundation of house and tech house is the four-on-the-floor kick, a beat on every count of the bar. It is what lets a DJ match one record to the next and what lets dancers stay with a track for six minutes; in a track like Faces, everything else happens on top of it.
Faces also belongs to a particular club culture: small German labels, live acts and DJ sets rather than charts. Alec Troniq founded his own label, Ipoly Music; Gabriel Vitel released his debut EP there; and Broque, the label of The Aviating, had released Troniq’s work before. Compare the darker, more minimal patience of Gabriel Vitel – Burn It Down, Gabriel Vitel’s own track from a year earlier.
Artistic Context
According to Discogs, Alec Troniq is a live act and electronic producer from Dresden and the founder of the label Ipoly Music. Gabriel Vitel, from Schwäbisch Hall and now living in Dresden, has been a songwriter since 2012 and an indie dance live act since 2013, and he plays live together with Troniq. The Aviating is credited to both of them as writers and producers, with Vitel also credited for the artwork.
Impact and Reception
Faces is not a chart record; it is a club track from a small German label, and its audience has found it through DJ sets and streaming. It deserves the full six and a half minutes, at volume.
