[Hessle Audio]

David Kennedy, one of Hessle Audio’s three founders, makes his triumphant return with HES026, drawing on his skill for spacious, innovative rhythms and sparse, starkly touching melodies for one of his most focused and effective records to date. That’s no small feat for a producer remarkable for his history of moving in a somewhat different, though logical, direction with every release. “Lola” is the closest Kennedy’s come to half-step for some time: a fiercely poised rhythm pierced by airy synth hits. Solemnly thuggish, it’s a dubbed-out usage of grime’s deeper potential, with just a touch of the genre’s hectic energy, like Danny Weed and Zomby working together in some fantastical alliance.

For “Power Drumsss,” the producer’s trademark dragging snares are ear-poppingly manipulated with heavy FX — breakbeats phasing, fizzing, and the buzz of a live current through a cable — as pounding, shattering kicks jolt the track with a steadier rhythm base. The textures and patterns of techno and electro are processed into something uncertain and beyond either. It’s a dangerously unbalanced drum tool, a slow-motion toxic explosion that sets dance floors on edge with constant, abrasive anticipation. Kennedy’s expertise in the construction of minutely detailed rhythmic effects is apparent in “Starburst,” and like the rest of the EP it is a novel but logical progression from previous material. A mechanized, shifting, pattern of phased and distorted drums folds and wraps into itself, as electromagnetic depth charges of bass hurtle into its fissures. The track is agile, destructive, and pressurizing enough as it is, but when the beat recedes to admit a shimmering burst of synth, a glowing halo of artificial light that catches the edges of the rhythmic machinery, the response it induces is nothing less than awe.