Seattle’s Orac label is just getting better and better, thanks to the disco inversions of artists like Bruno Pronsato, Strategy, and [a]pendics.shuffle, and labelhead Randy Jones’ debut full-length as Caro, after his spooky My Little Pony single, doesn’t disappoint. Minimal Techno undergirds it all, but almost by suggestion alone; the music itself is overstuffed with piano vamps, Trax flashbacks, Italo indulgences, and elements of classic New York Garage. Plenty of elements will sound familiar — “Sea of Hands” dips its fingers into Arthur Russell, Jones’ rhythms could drive any record on Perlon, and his revisitation of disco via contemporary means recalls Metro Area — but Caro doesn’t sound like anyone else. His compositions blur the line between tracks and songs, building slowly through meticulous addition, but shaping their hooks so that they sink in deeply, in tortuous ways. “Ah, Ah, Ah” practically plays out the artist’s “Eureka!” moment in stereo, morphing from a wide-panning exercise in randomized notes into a hands-in-the-air piano anthem, and all so slowly you never notice the muddied festival masses infiltrating the IRCAM studios. “My Little Castle,” bristling with off-beats and dirtier than a pair of earplugs after Glastonbury, breaks down the current fascination with EBM into a quietly punishing minimal Techno track as good (and as freaky) as anything out there. Despite its fascination with ‘80s house, the whole thing sounds almost unrecognizably ahead of its time.

— Philip Sherburne, The Wire

The Orac label has quietly transformed Seattle into a most unlikely outpost for minimal techno. The first Caro album, The Return of Caro, is the debut full-length from label head Randy Jones; one assumes that’s him astride a horse on the hilarious, faintly preposterous front cover. The cover’s wintry landscapes and Albers-like squares of shading are obfuscatory at first, but they do shape your perception of the record. While it is not cold or unwelcoming, The Return of Caro inhabits its own world.

That’s not a bad thing: minimal techno could do with a few more idiosyncratic records. “Sea of Hands” is shaded in aqua-green tints: between the waterlogged effects that dot the track and the oozing electronics that squirt throughout, “Sea of Hands” positively squelches. “My Little Pony” lays a low, insidious bass-line underneath an anthropomorphic lyric whose delivery is coated in layers of odd, queasy vocoder. The starkness of a production like “Pony” is offset by tiny interjections, like the miniaturised organ vamp that Jones fires into the song’s slipstream. This is one of Jones’ trademarks: you can hear it in the opening “Ah, Ah, Ah,” as a glinting piano chime splits apart the randomised glass-tone “melodies” that form the basis of the track. “We Can Build It” sounds like the follow-up to Isolée’s Rest that Rajko Muller never managed, thanks largely to the sputtering oddness of the burnished electro-redux stabs. That’s one of the few times The Return of Caro directly evokes anyone else’s music; it’s mostly too damn slippery. They must feel a bit out-of-place up there in Seattle.

— Jon Dale, Dusted

Electronic music and questionable equestrian imagery seem to go together. European electro-techno virtuoso Vitalic had the legendary “Poney EP.” There’s the German trio International Pony, which included Kompakt techno star DJ Koze. In the dark-horse category, there was “Acid Horse,” a collaboration between Cabaret Voltaire and Ministry, and Coil’s “Horse Rotorvator.” Colourbox, which became M/A/R/R/S, had a track called “Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse.” And the Avalanches stitched their goofy single “Frontier Psychiatrist” together with samples of a horse neighing. What gives?  Caro, also known as Seattle dance-music producer and Orac label head Randy Jones, has a bit of a, shall we say, fixation with the subject. The album cover of The Return of Caro is a black-and-white photograph of Jones on a horse, staring blankly into the distance, and the pinkish-purple CD is inscribed “To all the dancing ponies--love, Caro.”

Creeped out yet? The signature track is “My Little Pony,” which is probably not about your favorite childhood toy. Over a lurching bassline and a clomping dance beat, Jones, his voice processed to sound like he’s just had a tracheotomy, hisses “My little pony...dance all night pony...I love the way you shake your head...I love the way you shake your tail....” Then his lecherous Darth Vader voice breaks down, and he orders, “Shake!” “Work!” It’d be nightmarish if it weren’t so damn funny--and funky. As it is, it sounds a little like the more paranoid reaches of the work of Berlin-based über-producer Ricardo Villalobos, combined with the spirit of old Chicago house tracks that issued blunt commands like “Move your body.”

The comparison to Chicago inches a step further into full-on homage on the ten-minute opus “My Little Castle.” Eerie synth squiggles and queasy, shifting textures eventually give way to classic jacking Chicago house. Despite showing its influences, however, The Return of Caro sounds new and different, packed with lush and unexpected sonics, subtle and unsubtle all at once.

— Geeta Dayal, City Pages

Ah, endlich ist es da, das Album von Caro, und es enttäuscht nicht eine Sekunde, dabei hatte man wirklich verdammt große Erwartungen in es gesetzt. Die EPs von ihm auf Orac waren schwer zu toppen, und darum geht es auch gar nicht auf einem Album, das so Titel hat wie: “Mein kleines Pony”, “Mein kleines Schloss”, “Ah,Ah,Ah” usw. Caro hat seine Stimme gefunden, das nutzt er hier aus, sing auf fast jedem Track zu sehr präzisen aber unglaublichen Beats, die von Minimalismus nur noch die Präzision haben, lässt, um das ganze noch heimeliger wirken zu lassen, gerne Gitarrensamples durch die Tracks flattern, landet aber immer und immer wieder in einem Jamsound, der die einzelnen Elemente so abstrakt zu einer Funkwelt übersetzt, in der Italo, Minimal, House, Pop, fast wie verwaschene Sterne am Firmament erscheinen, innerhalb dessen man sich von nun an mit Caro orientieren kann. Hier endet kein Track wie man es vorhersagen würde, es geht immer in neue Richtungen, deren Zusammenhalt sich einzig durch die unglaubliche Spannung die Caro immer wieder erzeugt erschliesst, und wer denkt, hey, das könnte eine echt anstrengende Platte sein, so wie das hier klingt, der täuscht sich, denn “The Return Of Caro” ist so lässig und swingend, soulig und direkt dabei, dass man sämtliche andere Platten mit Gesang diesen Monat dagegen getrost als schlappen Versuch Pop zu machen bezeichen kann, denn das hier ist Popmusik in seiner wahren Grösse, und dabei dennoch bis über beide Ohren fundamentalste Housegeschichte.

Ah, finally it’s here, Caro’s Album, and it doesn’t disappoint for one second-- one had really weighed it down with some big expectations.  The EPs by him on Orac were hard to top, and so don’t at all go again on an album, which has titles now: “My Little Pony,” “My Little Castle,” “Ah, Ah, Ah,” etc.  Caro has found his voice, which he works out here, singing on nearly every track to very precise yet unbelievable beats that take only the precision from Minimalism-- to let the whole work in a more homey way, happy guitar samples flutter under the tracks, but landing again and again in a Jam sound, of particular elements translated so abstractly to a funk world in which Italo, Minimal, House, Pop appear, almost like washed-out stars in the Firmament inside of which one can orient one’s self with Caro from now on.

Here no track ends as one would predict, they go always in new directions, whose cooperation is only opened up through the unbelievable tension Caro brings again and again, and one who thinks, hey, that sounds like it could be a genuinely exhausting record, is mistaken, because “The Return of Caro” is so easy-going and funky, soulful and thereby direct that one attempting to make Pop can take note: it confidently smacks down other records with vocals this month because here is Pop music in its true size, then again at the same time up to its ears in fundamental House history.

— bleed, de:bug

What, exactly, is so odd about seeing Caro astride a horse, all regal-like, on the cover of his debut full-length? Maybe the suggestion of an electronic producer being some sort of explorer is just regrettably dated—lately, it seems more of an accomplishment to successfully claim one’s own particular little parcel than to discover an altogether new place. Happily, Caro is pulling some serious Sir Francis Drake shit here—circumnavigating the world of electronic music via one of the most roundabout routes ever charted (or stumbled upon, as it often seems). The payoff of Caro’s Return is that he’s straight-up laden with all sorts of awesome spices—there are flashes of Italo-disco (“We Can Build It”), pinches of pure Chicago acid-house (“Can’t Tell Why”), experimental glitch collages (“Sea of Hands”), classy lounge touches (“Ah, Ah, AH”)—and it’s all packed into satchels of pure pop. Caro’s penchant for soul often sounds out of its element among the various musical scenes his tastes call up; but that smooth voice of his makes nice with the natives and, more often than not, he’s able to keep the tensions from getting messy—primarily by getting in and getting out. Like the majority of the offerings of his Orac label, The Return is serious about smudging genres together, nudging electronic music forward and having a roar doing it. Caro has mapped out an intensely fun voyage through miles of styles—and he’s done it all atop a filthy little pony.

— Michael Brodeur, The Weekly Dig (Boston)

Nach drei EPs auf Orac veröffentlicht Caro jetzt dort sein Debütalbum, und “The Return Of Caro” ist tatsächlich eine sensationelle LP: Das, wovon zurzeit alle träumen, eine aus Techno und House hervor gegangene, elektronische Popmusik, gelingt hier auf einen Schlag. Die Genialität des Albums liegt darin, dass Pop tatsächlich aus dem minimalen Sound heraus gedacht wird: Statt das Poppige an die Tracks dran zu klatschen, wird die Konsistenz und die Ökonomie des Minimal-Sounds hier auf ein Pop-Plateau verschoben. Im Gegensatz zu den Sängern im elektronischen Milieu, die vor dem Mikro ja gerne einen Laberflash kriegen, bestehen die Lyrics hier nie aus mehr als zwei Sätzen. Caros Verdienste für einen elektronische Popsound werden bloß insofern relativiert, als dass er sein erzählerisches Szenario in einem ziemlich intimen, ja privaten Rahmen anlegt, der aber nichts Zimperliches oder gar Kindliches hat. Und “My Little Pony” ist die sublim-romantische Version von DJ Assaults “Ass & Titties”.

After three EPs on Orac Caro now publishes his debut album there, and “The Return of Caro” is actually a sensational LP: what everyone’s dreaming of right now, an electronic Pop music springing from Techno and House, succeeds here in one fell swoop. The geniality of the album lies in the fact that Pop is actually thought out from the minimal sound: instead of slapping a coat of Pop over the tracks, the consistency and economy of Minimal sounds are shifted onto a Pop plateau here.  Unlike the singers in the electronic world that like to have their sketchy SMS wars on the mic, here the lyrics are never more than two sentences.  Caro’s merits for an electronic Pop sound are only related inasumch as he lays out his narrative scenario within a rather intimate and private framework which, however, has nothing simpering or childlike.  And “My Little Pony” is the sublime-romantic version of DJ Assault’s “Ass & Titties”.

— AW, Groove

Randy Jones has a strange affinity for Montreal. Early last year, under his Caro guise, the Seattle producer and label head put out the highly overlooked but excellent minimal 12-inch “Super Danse Contact,” fondly named after everyone’s favourite Ste-Catherine peeler-bar marquee. Montreal will doubtless soon be showing some love back, given Caro’s latest album. With its mix of jacking Chicago house bounce and German minimal tech funk, it’s hard not to really get into this album on first listen. House heads who look, teary-eyed, back to the soulful days of Jamie Principle will love “Can’t Tell Why,” while fans of Ricardo Villalobos’s darker vocal tracks will simply melt for “My Little Pony.” A fresh mix of classic and futuristic.

— Raf Katigbak, Montreal Mirror

Orac Records zählt zu den interessantesten US-amerikanischen Labels, die dank des Kompakt-Vertriebs auch hier Gehör finden. Label-Mitbegründer Randy Jones ist als Caro darüber hinaus ein neuer Liebling in den DJ-Sets von Matthew Dear oder Michael Mayer.  Seit seiner Kindheit bastelt Randy Jones Tracks am Computer, seit er in Seatle lebt und das aktuelle nordamerikanische Techno-Geschehen selbst mit erleben und prägen kann, kristallisiert sich unter seinem Alias Caro immer offensichtlicher eine funkende Perle heraus - ähnlich wie Matthew Dear vor zwei Jahren. Seine Tracks sind aufgeräumt, geradlinig, und verspühen dennoch einen so verspielten Funk, das man sich zu ärgern beginnt, nicht vor Freude fliegen zu können. Ab und an singt Randy Jones charmant. Sein Debütalbum “The Return Of Caro” vereint Techno-Hits wie “My Little Pony” oder “We Can Build It” mit typischen Albumtracks, die weniger auf den Tanzflur schielen, dafür jedoch nicht weniger versiert an Genreüberschreitungen feilen. Es gibt keine bessere Jahreszeit als den Frühling, um solch ein Album zu veröffentlichen.

Orac Records ranks among the most interesting US-American labels, and thanks to Kompakt’s distribution it is also heard here.  Label cofounder Randy Jones, AKA Caro, is also a new favourite in the DJ sets of Matthew Dear or Michael Mayer.  Since his childhood Randy Jones has made tracks on the computer; since then he lives in Seattle where he can experience and shape the current North American Techno scene, and has crystallized under his alias Caro what is ever more obviously a funky pearl - like Matthew Dear in his first two years.  His tracks are cleared-out, straight-lined, and nevertheless spew such a playful funk that one begins to soar with joy before getting annoyed.  Now and then Randy Jones sings charmingly.  His debut album “The Return of Caro” brings together Techno hits like “My Little Pony” and “We Can Build It” with typical album tracks which focus less on the dancefloor, but however are no less versed in carving out genre transgressions.  There is no better season than spring in which to release such an album.

— (jw), tonspion.de

One-time Madison, Wisconsin native and current Seattle resident, Caro (Randy Jones) follows up two Orac singles with his first full-length and it’s a good one. The album finds Jones fusing an advanced programming sensibility (he helped create the audiovisual software Jitter for Cycling ‘74) with his love of dance music, resulting in a fresh hybrid that’s both abstract and accessible. Consider the closer a compelling case in point, as “My Little Castle” merges atonal minimalism with bleeding acid synths and a strutting techno pulse; “Heavy Wheel” likewise interweaves dramatic piano themes with staccato synth burble and languid shimmy while “Sea of Hands” offers a slightly more dissonant take on Caro’s soulful sound.

Jones brings a thoroughly contemporary sensibility to the album’s eight tracks but also unashamedly embraces the styles of earlier eras, even disco. Emerging from abstract squelches and an anchoring bass line, the opener “Ah, Ah, Ah,” for example, gradually comes into focus as a piano-driven, disco-funk workout powered by a crisp drum punch. While the salsa-flavoured “OVNIto” proves Jones’ command when venturing further afield, the synth-jittery pumper “We Can Build It” shows Caro’s penchant for intricate patterning. Though silken electronic washes nicely bring the song’s melancholy core to the forefront, the interweave of lurching bass stabs, blurping squeals, and swizzle bursts that appears during the song’s coda is even more memorable.
Some songs include vocals, most notably “Can’t Tell Why” and “My Little Pony.” Though the former opens in Basic Channel mode, it quickly morphs into an irresistibly jacking track. Boosted by bemused shout-outs and squelchy acid synths, the track weaves a slithering skanky spell while spectral keyboards trade twilight solos. And sounding just as fresh as it did on its EP issue, “My Little Pony” unites all of Caro’s strengths into a single song. Spurred by a buzzing, burbling bass line and clip-clops, Jones’s distorted vocal oozes just the right amount of creepy sleaze in its helpless equine adoration. After the laughter subsides, one appreciates even more the track’s marvelous and subtly radical take on techno-funk, and the cowbell episode at the end is pure genius. In fact, the song’s humorous dimension is no accident given that a similar lighthearted exuberance reigns throughout. Caro’s clearly serious about his music yet the album’s mood is anything but portentous. Instead, The Return of Caro is not only musically delectable but buoyed by an irreverent spirit.

— Ron Schepper, textura

At the very least, you should get a good look at the cover for Caro’s first album for his own label. It features, presumably the label head himself, atop a pony and looking quite dapper. For a genre increasingly fond of humor, it’s a brilliantly pompous image that can’t help but make you smile. Music-wise, the album veers over and says hello to just about everything imaginable: acieed, Italo, down-tempo, minimal house, and jazz. “Heavy Wheel” does one of these synthesized moments best, working a Keith Jarrett piano into a fascinating duel with acid bass. Of course, the previously released “My Little Pony” is a highlight, but honestly that track’s adherence to the one genre that Orac can be accused of favoring (cut-up house) is the exception and not the rule here. “Can’t Tell Why,” for example, moves straight from dubby techno into a fierce jacking beat, for example, hardly stopping along the way. Caro’s The Return of Caro sounds exactly like what you might expect from the guy that is credited with helping create software called Jitter for Cycling74, but that’s hardly a bad thing—it’ll keep you on your toes throughout.

— Todd Burns, Stylus

Smart and challenging, exciting and accessible, this disc is a techno treat. Caro makes his mark as a patient and creative technician, taking time to build quirky, floor-thumping grooves full of tasty blips and thwops. Eclectic and highly danceable, tracks like “Sea of Hands” demonstrate not only a high level of programming prowess (in a previous life, Caro helped create Cycling ‘74’s Jitter software), but also a keen sense of composition and theory. And while “Sea of Hands” plays like a classy art song gone electro, “My Little Pony” trips out as a slightly creepy, very sensual piece of voyeuristic dance-floor brilliance.

— Michael Gallant, Keyboard