[Music Man Records]

A limited edition in stylish plastic spot-varnish sleeve and your choice of colored vinyls (blue, silver, and white), veteran Croation producer Petar Dundov’s latest (and first release since February of 2007) visually jumps off the shelves at collectible-minded buyers, but the real treasures are on the vinyl itself. Released as a taster for Dundov’s forthcoming Escapements LP, “Oasis” is quite worthy of standing alone, thank you very much. Starting with a low, repeated percussive throb, the track unfolds like a map to the stars, a series of new arpeggiated riffs and percussive clicks adding texture and chasing the cosmic bumblebee drift of a melody around and around, seemingly random but really part of some mad master plan. Some gently acidic mixing tricks follow, but the joy is in the journey, not the payoff — a trick many producers try to pull off, but seldom do as effectively as this. It’s like Jeff Mills playing Philip Glass. This is a good, good thing.

On the flip, Substance & Vainqueur of Scion fame let some of the air out, running the track inside out while adding a more traditional backbeat, losing the layered trickery of the original and adding their trademark space-dub echo effects. They wind up with a track that’s altogether more straightforward, raising the tempo and overall dance-floor quotient, and it will likely see more play than the original. But it is far less stunning a track to actually listen to, albeit quite good for what it is, and it certainly won’t make you forget the original. If Dundov has an album’s worth of material this good in the can, Escapements will be well worth checking.