“Robin Stewart regrows dub techno from the seeds on ‘Crinkle’, following 2023’s ‘When A Worm Wears A Wig’ with a set of twisted warehouse melters that apply advanced dub logic to pointillistic technoid rhythms. RIYL Rhyw, Peder Mannerfelt or Rrose.

Think about dub techno for a moment and it’s not hard to imagine a very specific aesthetic – something that began with Basic Channel in the ’90s and plateaued only a few years later. This was just one application, though; not only has techno mutated in the last few decades, but there’s more to dub than bussed tape echo and snatched stabs. Bristol-based Stewart goes back to the source here, considering the way his favorite vintage dub records hit physically, not just how they sound on the surface. It’s not an easy mental leap to make, considering the trade up you need to make when you prioritize soft, warm bass throbs over the kind of ear-bleed kicks you’d expect find knocking the mortar from the Berghain brickwork every weekend. When does techno stop being techno altogether, exactly?

So ‘Stomach’ is a genuine surprise, leaving Giant Swan’s punky, maximalist swagger as a distant memory. The off-grid, lolloping kicks are interesting enough on their own, but it’s how Stewart treats them that makes the track pop, sinking them in swirling, lysergic goop rather than drowning them out with rinsed tape FX. The oscillating, demonic subs that heave just beneath the surface don’t muddy things completely, they crack the sunroof on the top end, letting the industrialized foley clanks and hoarse vocaloid stutters boot us towards an unexpected destination. And although ‘Compact’ is more trad on the surface – a gated peak-time roller, natch – Stewart’s canny processing makes the kicks tickle more than they thump. Everything builds up to the title track, where Stewart freezes mind-rinsing dissociated echo spirals into their own rhythmic forms that push against the relentless double-time thuds, weaving phantom polyrhythms out of thin air while spectral voices whisper overhead.

Don’t sleep on this one – just make sure you’ve got Adrian Sherwood’s shrooms plug on speed dial first.”

Thanks Boomkat!

“London bassbin mutator Brassfoot twists up his first EP since a killer 2022 album; five tracks of trippy electronics and rudely strident, locked-in steppers grooves for TTT’s weirdo club sanctuary

Since debuting on Funkineven’s Apron in 2015, Brassfoot has built a solid rep for his psyched-out bent on soundsytem conventions across a slew of 12”s and tapes for likes of DBA and beside J M S Khosah for London/Tokyo co-op NCA. ‘Search History’ checks in with the perennial club screwball for the first time in years, clocking in with the detuned synth excursion ‘Double Speak’ and tripping from the sodden stepper ‘Kinda Vicarious’ to spiralling, iridescent arps in the dreamier motion of ‘Cat Riddles & Gunnels Juice’, spurting a class bit of breakcore-type pressure with the chopped breaks and pinging cowbells of ‘Earthtopia’ recalling NPLGNN and Ossia, and seeing it off with the dank zinger ‘A Nation, No Flag’.”

Thanks Boomkat!

Here

Wilson Tanner – Legends

RS Tangent – Crinkle

Brassfoot – Search History

yimmyayo

“TTT’s Will Bankhead blends special ingredients on his 4th serving as What We, allowing us to tag along thru his extensive wormholing, with no rhyme no reason – just supremely zonked tunes.

For 79 minutes ‘XOX’ unzips the mind and unfurls along astral-planing axes from velvet jazz to kosmische and bottle-end industrial sludge, via kids’ chatter and pastoral french folk with a guess-again manner and sense of genre-bending mischief that’s a pleasure to follow.

It’s the sound of a record collecting obsessive attempting to come to terms with the size of their stash and almost incidentally re-establishing the notion that the magic so often lies in the margins, where styles buckle into one another and answers become questions in themselves.

Top tier weirdo business, for the heads.”

Thanks Boomkat!

Ulla E. Straus and John Andrew Wilhite – Spatial Data Management (Original Score)

Brassfoot – Search History out today!

Via All Night Flight!

Iancu Dumitrescu – Ansamblul Hyperion

PLO Man – Ge1 Tape [KZU002]

XOX