Parabolas

The Los Angeles-based producer John Tejada’s Parabolas is his first album of original material since 2008’s Where. A work of finely honed minimal techno, his latest effort is also his first full-length for the excellent Cologne-based label Kompakt. Parabolas is more than the sum of its parts; as finely crafted as the individual tracks are, it’s the overall shape and flow of the album that impresses most. On “Farther and Fainter,” a riff continually morphs as it’s driven by a pulsing chug, while “The Dream” is a floaty slice of ambient colored by a repeating acoustic piano figure. Zigzagging interjections mark “Mechanized World,” a perky, finger-snap driven cruiser; “Subdivided” is a constellation of burbling sounds that shift and twirl. An edgy rhythm track supports a conveyor belt of appealing fragments on “Timeless Space,” and “Unstable Condition” is one of the darker tracks here. Tejada’s gifts aren’t limited to tranciness and texture; he shows his catchy side on “The Mess and the Magic,” a cut that sports an irresistible chord progression in its middle section. The tense and insistent “Uncertain End” brings the album to its conclusion.