Guest Mix: Moth - Night Sketches

We've got a darker-than-black guest mix for you today from Moth with some of our favourite recent techno and electro tunes. This one's for late-night skanking, and we've got the tracklist exclusively here on White Noise.

Tracklist:

Kasra V – Last Order

Dan White – Death Flutes

Khotin – Sorry Sequence

Hodge – I Don’t Recognise You Lately

Surfing – Surfing

Aschof Mal – Untitled

Olerton – Nolact

Basic House – Cones

Asusu – Serra

Pev & Kowton – Raw Code

Luca Lozano – End of Line

Aurora Halal – Just Tell Me

Best Tracks of 2013: 25-1

After yesterday’s ramble on the nature of year-end lists, we’ll keep this one short and to the point. For all that such lists are worth, here are White Noise’s 25 favourite tracks of 2013.

25: The Mole – Lockdown Party (DJ Sprinkles Crossfaderama) [EP Review]

 

DJ Sprinkles had a fantastic year, scoring one of the year’s best mixes as well as a brilliant remix package – and the legendary academic / DJ also found time to knock out one of the year’s very best tracks. If you play this out in a set Sprinkles does the work for you: leaning on the EQs, filters and crossfader, splicing in samples here and there, and on the dancefloors this one brought dancers together like no other.

24: A Made Up Sound – Ahead [EP Review]

AMUS’ unhinged Ahead is an unsettling track. It’s not the lurking threat of the looped vocals or the splintered beats, but rather the track’s utter disregard for dance music convention which makes for such a jarring listen. But from the broken remains of melodic hooks and a 4/4 AMUS builds something brave and new, amazing and perplexing the listener in equal measure.

23: Romare – Hey Now (When I Give You All My Lovin’) [EP Review]

 

At just over two minutes, the closer to Romare’s second EP is by a long way the shortest track on this list, and could easily be considered a jazzy outro to the more substantial meat on the release. Yet something about that Nina Simone sample and the languid piano gives this track an edge, making for a soupy soul number which is more than just an interlude. When the seedy trumpet bursts through the track’s second half the effect is unparalleled, edging us towards the repeat button every time.

22: HNNY – Mys [EP Review]

Scandinavian retroist HNNY doesn’t receive a whole lot of praise in music press. Perhaps his tracks lean too heavily on nostalgia, and here on Mys the beat pattern is more than a little functional. But to disregard him would be to ignore the beautiful simplicity of his music: it may not wear cutting-edge techniques but it has soul in spades. Mys is a glorious track, sensuous vocal cries looped over a thundering bass bounce, perfect for an ear-catching opener or a mid-set slow jam.

21: Innershades – That Girl [EP Review]

Our favourite new producer of 2013 burst out of nowhere on That Girl, a Dancemania-indebted track with menacing synths and a mighty kick-drum. The tracks’ simple structure and rough muscle made it a dancefloor bomb every time, showing just how much can be done with a few perfectly-tuned elements.

20: Chesus – Special [EP Review]

Editing a disco track into a filtered house cut is the oldest trick in the book – but perhaps the reason so many producers give it a shot is because when done well, the blend of euphoric soul and house muscle has an effect like little else. The addictive vocal of Special is honey to the ears, while those glorious strings feel like a spiritual successor to New For U.

19: FCL – It’s You (San Soda’s Panorama Bar Acca Version)

It’s practically just a vocal, yet it’s not surprising that FCL’s It’s You attracted so much attention over the last year. In a year of industrial sounds and lofi aesthetics this track provided a dose of grace and soul, perfect to open a set or mix over more tougher jams.

18: Jessy Lanza – Keep Moving [LP Review]

Jessy Lanza’s debut on Hyperdub was one of the year’s best pop records, and the disco-indebted Keep Moving was an essential highlight. Lanza’s hook’s are urgent and catchy, while the combination of guitar licks, synth stabs and an elastic bassline make for a seductive package indeed.

17: June – Face This (Deep House Mix)

In terms of nostalgic house exercises, this low-slung workout had it all: the looped ‘house’ vocal, the meandering bass bounce, the delectable acid line. House music at its best, pure and simple.

16: Florian Kupfer – Feelin

The relatively unknown Kupfer gave L.I.E.S. its first anthem on Feelin, an addictive vocal sugar-coating lush synthwork, clattering drums and a a meaty bassline.

15: Nils Frahm – Says

 

Since my friend described listening to this track as ‘like discovering a new world in an underwater ice cave using sonar’ I haven’t really been able to think about it any other way. On Frahm’s triumphant Spaces LP, Says stood out for its majesty and subtlety, fragile piano notes accompanying a glistening arpeggio. The track’s slow build is utterly consuming: by the time you get to that late-game key change you’ll already be lost.

14: Roly Porter – Cloud [LP Review]

The grand opening to Roly Porter’s cosmic exploration was a powerful force: vocals looped beyond humanity, alloyed to a stammering beat pattern and the glacial movement of string figures beyond.

13: Paul Woolford – Untitled [EP Review]

Paul Woolford owned this year. Under his Special Request guise he released the hardcore revival’s most brilliant record, and then on this one-off for Hotflush he issued a worthy successor to 2006's smash Erotic Discourse. The honeyed vocals and anthemic piano line might prove cheesy in other contexts, but married to Woolford’s brawny drums they’re just perfect. One of the few Ibiza anthems that genuinely deserved play beyond the island’s borders.

12: Murat Tepeli – Forever (Prosumer’s Hold Me Touch Me Remix)

 

Everything came together perfectly on Prosumer’s remix of long-time collaborator Murat Tepeli. The piano line is positively venomous, while the soaring vocal and tight beat patterns open the door to the dark side of euphoria.

11: Pev – Livity [EP Review]

If there’s one producer who released more great tracks than any other this year, Pev was he. Across two collaborative EPs and a solo outing, the Bristolian was on finer form than ever, and the combination of the manic, queasy bassline and those jangling keys on Livity is utterly unforgettable.

10: Floorplan – Never Grow Old [LP Review]

The relationship between religion and dance music in Robert Hood’s music is the subject of frequent discourse, partly of its rarity – yet he’s on to something: the ability of the two to allow a person to transcend the physical, to make a group unite and rejoice, is a striking similarity. Nowhere is Hood more likely to make you believe than on Never Grow Old, an Aretha-sampling beast stitching that achingly soulful vocal onto an adamantine 4/4 skeleton.

9: Special Request – Mindwash [LP Review]

Paul Woolford’s attitude towards jungle and hardcore is striking because of his ability to modernise these sounds rather than just ape them. Mindwash is an unhinged trip whose maniacal bassline never sits still, sounding remarkably current even over a field of breaks ripped right out of a 90s textbook.

8: Damiano von Erckert – Hollywood [LP Review]

 

The ava label-head’s debut solo album was a glorious journey through the sounds of the past, and it was his pitch-perfect disco number that got us most excited. Perhaps Hollywood could have been made fifteen years ago, but it sounds as brilliant now as it would have back then. Georgia Anne Muldrow gives a phenomenal vocal performance over Erckert’s production dripping with funk: a utterly timeless collaboration.

7: Levon Vincent - ???

Levon took us back with this one: never had he sounded so urgent and floor-focused, conjuring the year’s most distinctive bassline and treating it with his gritty warehouse stylings and a game-changing synth to close.

6: DJ Rashad – Let It Go [EP Review]

Rashad ascended to footwork royalty this year thanks to a series of country- and genre-spanning releases, but even on his ace album he couldn’t quite top Let It Go. The vulnerability on display is almost unheard of in juke’s macho culture, as delicate strings falter under a desperate vocal plea. Yet even when he gets all emotional, Rashad never forgets his roots, and the stammering breaks added a vital urgency to the heart-tugging vocal cuts.

5: Omar S – The Shit Baby [LP Review]

Another year, and Detroit’s unstoppable Omar S still plays no one’s game but his own. This grammatically-challenged cut was as simple as Omar gets: the percussion is all groove: skipping snares, a solid kick and a descending bassline. But the inclusion of D. Taylor’s improvised piano takes this track into the stratosphere, offering a euphoric lead sure to get the crowd beaming as well as dancing.

4: Sophie – Bipp [EP Review]

I can make you feel better! The kind of track that makes a dance journalist use an exclamation mark is rare indeed, but it’s impossible to not get excited listening to Sophie’s second excellent release. Bipp is a breed of inverted pop, its saccharine vocal tied unexpectedly to pops, fizzes and jittery, drumless synths. On paper it sounds terrible, but a single listen would reassure any listener: Bipp is one of the year’s most brilliant, bizarre tracks, and is absolutely impossible to stop listening to.

3: Tessela – Hackney Parrot [EP Review]

If this was a list of the year’s ‘biggest’ tracks, Hackney Parrot would have no competition for the top spot. There are few tunes that make dancers stop in their tracks, but time and again Hackney Parrot destroyed dancefloors, its monstrous drop driving dancers into a frenzy. The stuttering breaks, the syrup-thick synth notes, that abrupt vocal hook: the ‘parrot is pure gold, and it’s going to be tough for Tessela to top.

2: Oneohtrix Point Never – Chrome Country

When I first heard this track I was walking through an airport. The infinite escalators, miles of plate glass and silenced urgency of travellers made for a stunning mental music video, and the song evoked a reverie of the essential beauty of human interaction even in our involved, over-stimulated age. Coming at the end of Daniel Lopatin’s brilliant new album, Chrome Country is a hymn for the digital age, its synthetic choirs frayed by electronic processing, its blissful strings and keys sometimes drowned by a swooning ambient wash. The track’s conclusion introduces a majestic organ – never before has Lopatin’s music sounded so optimistic, so downright heavenly. But we’re right there with him.

1: Palms Trax – Equation [EP Review]

At its best, house music is very simple. Granted, there are many producers who toy with complex rhythmic and melodic structures to great effect, but the old adage ‘gotta have house music’ was extolling something accessible, something universal. Palms Trax’ Equation wears its influences on its sleeve: eschewing the current lofi trend for the polished new-age sound of the Burrell Brothers and Nu Groove. Yet Equation easily transcends its retro trappings: its perfect counterpoint of soaring synths and rolling bassline inviting everyone, young and old, cool and lame, to get on the ‘floor and throw some shapes. No track in 2013 made us want to get up and dance as much as Equation, and for that simple reason, it tops our list.

Best of 2013:

* Best Labels of 2013

* Best EPs of 2013
* Best Tracks: 85-26
* Best Tracks: 25-1

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Will Hardcore Ever Die? Techno's Resurrection of the Breakbeat

Hardcore will never die – we’ve all heard the old adage. Except over the last ten years, hardcore did kind of die. The breakbeat, once supreme champion of dancefloor percussion, just wasn’t cool anymore. Meanwhile all the genres that worshipped at the altar of these chopped funk breaks: drum’n’bass, jungle and hardcore, began to stagnate, left to the die-hards with their perma-gurns as the school of the new millennium turned to grime, garage and dubstep, or indeed back to the worthy institutions of house and techno. The use of breakbeats within hip hop has a long history and continues to bear fruit, but it’s only recently that the percussive style has seen a re-emergence in the dance sphere.

For years the breakbeat scenes haven’t seen much in the way of progress, the last notable exception being DnB’s Autonomic phase spearheaded by the likes of Instra:Mental and dBridge. Yet listen closely and the winds are changing: there has been a sharp increase in the use of breakbeats in modern dance music in 2013, whether they appear as retro ornaments or something altogether newer: conventional drum loops twisted, distorted and recontextualised into fresh shapes. While others have charted the re-emergence of new forms of drum and bass, this article will explore the practitioners who are recontextualising breakbeats at slower tempos, in techno and beyond. 

Paul Woolford - Mindwash

One of the men at the heart of this revival (and the inspiration for this article) is none other than man of the moment Paul Woolford, who is currently attracting all the right attention with the rugged productions of his Special Request moniker. With a name that references (perhaps even mourns) the pirate radio stations that birthed his sound, Woolford’s Special Request tracks are ferocious club monsters, where familiar breaks are squashed into tough technoid forms, glorifying hollow, compressed kicks and elastic breakbeat loops. Yet Woolford’s compositions are not just throwback. On each of his celebrated white label releases (along with an ace recent EP for Houndstooth), he adds a distinct flavour to the gritty soundcraft, keeping it personal and modern. For example, while the superb Mindwash may give way to a tear-streaked breakdown of breathy vocals and eternal synths in pure 90s style, it has at its core the restless pursuit of a maniacally sinuous melodic line which would only be heard this decade.

Pev – Aztec Chant

As most of the music that heavily used breakbeats hovered around the 160bpm mark, some of the more interesting re-appropriations of the beats have come from artists who have slowed them down. Livity Sound head-honcho Pev (formerly Peverelist) is one of the UK scene’s leading lights at the moment, honing an utterly unique style of techno which incorporates various elements of the UK’s hardcore and dubstep lineage. Hear on this year’s Aztec Chant how the breakbeat is just one of the track’s percussive components, nestled amidst panning melodics and frayed hi-hats, looping like a broken record until it finally takes centre stage for the track’s final two minutes. Yet it is not just scene stalwarts who are reclaiming the breakbeat: A Sagittariun, one of the country’s more intriguing new techno producers, constructs a moody scifi soundfield on his stylish Eye Against Eye, only for a slo-mo breakbeat to steal the scene, a perfect fit for the slick Detroit atmospherics.

DJ Haus – Cold As Ice

It’s not just individual producers who are looking to reclaim the hardcore sound: certain labels seem particularly intent on pushing the 90s revival. Chief among them is DJ Haus’ inimitable Unknown To The Unknown, who topped our list of 2012’s best labels. Besides a hilarious Youtube channel and bizzare cover-art, DJ Haus has used UTTU to resurrect some of dance music’s less popular genres, from electro to bassline garage. Proving that these old styles have life in them yet, some of UTTU’s breakbeat experiments have been pure gold: one need only look as far as Haus’ own Cold As Ice for an achingly cool lesson in hardcore, replete with a tacky synth breakdown which I wouldn’t have any other way. Elsewhere on the label, Lords Of Midnite’s excellent Drown In Ur Love EP took the breakbeat on a scifi odyssey for its epic analog title jam.

Andy Stott – Up The Box

We’ve seen a clear renewal of interest in the noble breakbeat, with a variety of artists co-opting those breakneck rhythms to their own ends. Yet outside of the dancefloor exists another group of hardcore operators, dealing with decay and disintegration, resulting in what is perhaps the most fascinating material that the breakbeat has to offer today. These artists can be loosely grouped around the experimental Modern Love and PAN imprints, the former’s Andy Stott being a perfect example. The formidable Up The Box, from his ace 2012 album Luxury Problems, is a semi-experimental piece which loops a locked breakbeat, jamming like machinery in a slowly building gale of static noise. After three minutes it drops away, and after a few atmospheric shifts returns with a phenomenal compressed kick in toe, an exhilarating fusion of jungle and techno that combines the tough distortion of each without even a moment’s relief. It may also be worth noting the possibility of Stott’s involvement in Modern Love’s ultra-limited Unknown / Hate project, a purist exercise in pitch-black junglism which yielded uncompromisingly destructive club tracks.

Demdike Stare - Collision

Further into the world of experimentation one comes across Demdike Stare’s recent Testpressing series, also out on Modern Love. Drawing on a profound knowledge of jungle, hardcore and noise, Collision saw the pair at their rawest yet, building four minutes of seething, heatsick noise around a bed of jammed, dysfunctional breakbeats. While Demdike turned jungle to noise, PAN’s Lee Gamble used his superb Diversions 1994-1996 to draw out the ambience of these tracks, dissolving breakbeats in the faded ambience of musical recall, turning the raves of the 90s into the incoherent, mesmerising sequences which now exist only in our memories. In a fitting parallel, a similar trick was pulled off by Anthony Naples on his remix of Special Request’s Mindwash, casting the legend of hardcore beneath the gauze of memory, eroded by time, subject to dissolution and fragmentation. These experimental re-appropriations of breakbeats treat the drum pattern as an artefact of its own time, and through recontextualising the familiar drum loop they pose questions about evolving musical trends and the unreliable nature of memory itself.

Tessela – Hackney Parrot

Before this article disintegrates, weighed down by the fragility of its pseudo-philosophical musings, it’s worth drawing attention to how current, how big these modern breakbeat iterations can also sound. On the following playlist you’ll hear a selection of some of the sounds discussed above, but also some genuinely innovative use of the classic drumloop – DJ Rashad’s minor masterpiece, the emotive Let It Go, which dissects breakbeats with the finesse of a surgeon, or Clouds’ ode to the rave thump on the monumental Future 1. Yet at the same time we have Dance’s curious Still, a ghostly slo-jam that leaves the breakbeat wholly intact, or Shed’s nuanced second outing as EQD, which ranks among the producers best work to date. Then there’s Tessela’s phenomenal Hackney Parrot, doubtless one of 2013’s most memorable anthems, guaranteed to get the crowd moving even if the dancers don’t know their breakbeat from their steak frites.

The lasting impression of this survey is the extraordinary versatility of this simple set of drum loops, which twenty years on are still being used and abused in the most fascinating, exhilarating fashions. Not only are artists continuing to insert breakbeats into showstopping underground hits, but the passage of time has permitted an artistic re-appraisal, with producers subjecting the drums to the decay of memory and time in a way which opens entirely new avenues of musical possibility. Will hardcore ever die? It’s up to the artists, but on the strength of the scene’s ability to appropriate and re-integrate artefacts of our musical past in ever-more innovative ways, it looks set to survive for a long while yet.

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Playlist

Tracklist:

DJ Rashad – Let It Go

A Sagittariun – Eye Against Eye

EQD – EQD 002B (04)

Clouds – Future 1
Point G - Braka

Special Request – Broken Dreams
Ramadanman - Don't Change For Me

Pangaea – Razz

Unknown / Hate – Human Resources
Deadboy - Nova

Special Request – Mindwash (Anthony Naples Eternal Mix)
Lowout - LAS

Dance – Still
Simoncino - Happy (DJ Sotofett Slow Jungle Trippin')

If you want more, check out Boomkat's ace series of playlists on 14tracks.

Livity Sound - Livity Sound

Label: Livity Sound

It’s not easy for a label to gain prominence in today’s saturated market, particularly when a new imprint seems to spring up every fortnight. Bristol’s Livity Sound stands as a masterful example in how to run things: a small group of artists (the ouput seems restricted to the three label-heads) who offer different slants on a brave, singular sound – if the music’s good enough, that’s all you need. Yet the Livity crew go one further: the trio are the brightest bastion of a ‘local scene’ in the UK, and over the last few years they’ve been bringing their town’s soundsystem tradition blazing into the future over a series of disarmingly consistent, club-tooled singles.

The three brains behind the operation are Bristol veteran Pev, rising star Kowton and relative newcomer Asusu, and together these players have worked to re-set the bass-wise meditations of early DMZ in taut techno moulds, resulting in what is unanimously some of the most vital dance music currently being produced. For the label’s first collaborative album the Livity Crew’s limited editions are compiled over nearly two hours of breathtaking sound, making for one of the year’s most essential releases.

As Kowton once stated in interview, there’s nothing superfluous about the Livity sound. The tracks are largely exercises in rhythm, purpose-built for the dancefloor, yet the most surprising aspect of the Livity Sound LP is just how well it works as an album. Thoughtfully sequenced (the release’s two discs are bookended by the label’s first release, alternate takes on the same track by Kowton and Pev), these percussive workouts turn hypnotic in the home, toying with the idea of function and allowing their intricacies and subtleties space to unfurl and breathe. While for many compilations the sudden availability of high-quality mp3s is the reason for purchase, here it’s just the icing on the cake: this is a work that deserves to be heard as a whole as well as being pulled apart for mixes.

Album Clips

The Livity Sound LP appears like a distant transmission; the group’s sound so fully formed, the individual practitioners so united in their approach. This breeds a sense of otherness which is only strengthened by the glyphs on the cover (which in fact landed Pev in some hot water recently), while evocative track titles such as Remnants, Erosions or End Point call to mind the deterioration of powerful civilisations. This decline is translated musically to the shards of grime, jungle and dubstep which course across the release, gifted new life by rugged techno exoskeletons, transposed to powerful alien territory. In keeping with both the label’s ominous mystique and the fall of British soundsystem tradition, a deep dread occupies some of the release’s most impressive cuts, from the swampy menace of Vapours to the systems breakdown of new cut Surge.

The package, and by extension the label, stand out for the unity of these artists’ visions, yet within the Livity sound each of the trio has a markedly distinct approach. Pev, reliable frontrunner of the UK scene for many a year, trades in tricky percussive mutations, whether going for the jugular on anthemic Kowton collab Raw Code or mesmerising the listener with the ever-mutating strains of Saltwater and Aztec Chant. Later his tracks hit a sustained high note on the second disc’s latter half, End Point’s dystopic scifi terrain proving one standout moment amongst many. Kowton wears grime influences boldly on his sleeve, adorning More Games’ rough drum workout with venomous strings, and taking a muscular approach on the utilitarian Jam 01. His approach may be the most confrontational, but Kowton’s versatility is evident from the off: on his surprisingly spacious mix of Beneath Radar a decayed string sample is stretched out with palpable yearning before an anxious drum pattern batters its way into the mix. Well-represented is the relatively unknown Asusu, whose distinctive application of the Livity sound to 4/4 techno provides many of the release’s standout moments. The force of Velez relies on its stark nature, while the insectoid ambience of penultimate track Too Much Time Has Passed makes for a darkly pensive final sequence.

The Livity Sound crew are masters of percussion, and as a result when they let a melody loose it really counts. Those grime strings of More Games prove an early highlight but there are more surprise moments of colour: the soft insistence of the synthwork on Asusu’s Rendering makes for a tasteful moment of polish poised against Livity’s otherwise raw sounds, while the jangling chords which interrupt Livity’s maniacally sinuous bassline make for – if forced to pick one – the LP’s most memorable moment.

Livity Sound’s output to date has been incredibly impressive, but when packaged together it’s enchanting and utterly consuming. The unerring consistency of the tracks – there’s barely a single dud to be found in 18 songs of six-plus minutes – stands as testament to the coherent vision and staggering talent of these three producers. With the inclusion of some forthcoming releases which are just as promising, this is more than a victory lap for the collective, it’s a mission statement. In the dance realm, there’s very little that’s more exciting than hearing a group of artists at the top of their game, thinking as one, and Livity Sound is most likely the best example of this that you’ll hear all year.

9/10

August / September Roundup 2013

September's Hardcore feature has led to hitherto unknown levels of busyness here at White Noise HQ, with the result that August's Roundup was left by the wayside. To solve this sorry state of affairs, we're repeating July's double extravaganza, cramming two months of superb music into a single youtube playlist. As usual, it starts off warm and housey, moves to weirder, technoid territories and finishes with some prime spacey material, including top picks from Forest Swords' AOTY contender Engravings and Andy Stott's unbelievable Tricky remix. Enjoy!

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Tracklist:

HNNY - Mys [EP Review]

Damiano von Erckert - Hollywood feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow [LP Review]

Jessy Lanza - Keep Moving [LP Review]

Space Dimension Controller - First Glance [EP Review]

Funkinevil - Ignorant (Igno) [EP Review]

D'Marc Cantu - Size & Shape 

Funkineven - The Joker

Leon Vynehall - Step Or Stone (Breath Or Bone) [EP Review]

Frank B - Chain Of Fools (Lumigraph's 909 Assassination Remix)

Shed - Fluid 67 [EP Review]

Call Super - Informer [EP Review]

Innershades - Nina At The Boiler Room [EP review]

Trevino - Twelve

CVNT - Feminine Destruction

De Sluwe Vos - OG Anthem

Jeremih - F U All The Time (Kowton Refix)

Etch - Hybrid [EP Review]

Visionist - Poison [EP Review]

Pev & Kowton - Vapours [EP Review]

Machinedrum - Gunshotta [LP Review]

Tricky - Valentine (Andy Stott Remix)

Forest Swords - An Hour [LP Review]

And the perennial 'one that wasn't on Youtube':

A Sagittariun - Clusters

Pev & Kowton - End Point / Vapours

Label: Livity Sound

Livity Sound are on a mission. The Bristol-based imprint, comprised of Pev, Kowton and Asusu are a label, a live show, and a dangerously talented set of DJs. The team’s streetwise techno mutations are critically aware of dance’s history, particularly the axis of jungle and grime, yet with each release they push indefatigably forward, their sounds unique and enthralling at each turn. Ahead of the release of a Livity Sound compilation in October (where many of these tunes will be available digitally for the first time), Pev & Kowton issue the final statement of Livity Sound’s first movement, a worthy follow-up to their superb Raw Code single which opened the year.

End Point / Vapours

As with both Pev’s solo productions and his collaborations, these are not straightforward bangers. Livity’s sound is subtle and dense, trading in spare, delicate arrangement, re-orientating the bass-wise meditations of early DMZ within techno structures. End Point is almost calm – a minimalist marvel comprised of high-frequency melodics, agitated hi-hats and emotive, scifi synthwork. The elements come together alchemically, sweeping the listener away to alien territories while retaining that pulsing club core. B-side Vapours is just as impressive, where a humid bed of eerie ambience builds to a showstopping conga rhythm. Once these drum patterns take hold they don’t relent, adorned only be laser stabs and menacing junglist atmospherics. The release comes as a victory lap for Livity Sound: stimulating both the mind and the body, a further mesmerising taste of two of the UK's boldest, most vital producers.

8/10