[Uncanny Valley]

Dresden’s Uncanny Valley clique continue to quietly operate a musical ecosystem of their own, with the latest record to emerge from the hardware-filled studio of Credit 00, a producer and designer who’s closely affiliated with the label, and who previously recorded tracks as Alexander Dorn. It’s a far more diverse, melodically accomplished, and rhythmically ensnaring set of tracks than his The Living Room Life EP of 2012, full of inventive rhythms and classic hardware sounds worked into brilliant forms. Appreciators of vintage acid and techno, as well as modern game-changers like Legowelt and October, will surely find space for this record.

Credit 00, excerpts from Ice Cream

“Ice Cream”‘s whimsically pornographic intro blends into camp horror movie atmosphere, getting cut up in a hip-hop style before dropping into an unfiltered, mechanically powered house bomb; swerving snare fills and reversing spin-backs are syncopated by smacks and bangs that sound as if they’re being produced by a team of steelworkers. “Round n Round” is a prime example of Credit 00’s predilection for tracks that idolize early Chicago house, pulling off a version that is as finely crafted as anything around, while still injecting something — harmony, timbre — of the label’s signature sound. Perhaps it’s that kind of faded, glimmering, Detroit-influenced melodic play, and it works wonderfully with the retrospective reverie of the track’s winding, clattering throb. On the other side, “East of Nowhere” sends out a quite Drexciyan signal from the pressurized deep. The sequenced patterns of the subtly variegating, filter-encrusted bass shapes hypnotize your focus while the synths and floating percussion rolls suffuse dreadful uncertainty into your air chamber with a twisted glee. Finally, with its sticky-dialed bass line that teeters like one of Kevin Saunderson’s speeding, thrashing monsters after a few sips too many, “Red Wine” again looks to the past — this again taking in early Detroit techno and acid — and adds a peculiar spin that fits warmly, with Dorn’s own barely sung lines drifting into a more personal, emotional nostalgia.