[Phonica White]

Japan’s Iori Asano is a relative newcomer to the techno scene whose first three releases have come either through Phonica’s limited white label editions or Prologue’s digital series of EPs. One wonders when a label will be confident enough to give his tracks a full, proper release, but Spaciotemporal, arriving as the third in the Phonica White chronology, hints that such a future shouldn’t be too far off for the rising Japanese star. Iori firmly aligns himself with the new school of darkly psychedelic, atmospheric techno that fits in well alongside his peers on Prologue. His most characteristic tracks stretch out decadently into double-digits and tend to gradually expand from the center, crucially making stationary techno’s forward-driving force in favor of a techno sound that more often washes over its audience than pounds them into oblivion.

“Spaciotemporal” is another of these ten-minute odysseys, but the astral haze that permeated last EP, Light Echo, has dissipated and left the intricate metal bare and vulnerable. An almost playful elastic bass line and straightforward percussion recall Shed’s white label warehouse wares as Wax, but Iori’s techno is crystal clear where WAX is gritty and rusty. The atmospherics eventually ghost their way in as a twinkling black-lit constellation, innumerable hovering synths gently pulsing and casting reflected light over the glazed surfaces of the hi-hats below. Iori allows his synthetic firmament to descend and the enmeshed gore that ensues is a gorgeous type of awe-struck fury, ending the track in the same bare bones framework that started it all. On the other side Skudge bring Iori back down to Earth; they might as well be rolling around in its soil. Their remix of the as-yet-unreleased “Grit” is nothing too out of the ordinary for them, caking Iori’s tinfoil sheets of sound with slabs of granular texture. While there’s nothing wrong with Iori’s scintillating techno, it’s just as nice to hear it with a bit of that jacking thrust. It seems a bit of a trifle next to the behemoth “Spaciotemporal” (and in 2010, upstaging Skudge is not easy), but that’s more a matter of the utter transcendence of the latter than any fault of the former.