[Skam]

Before Autechre were Autechre, they were, for the briefest of moments, Lego Feet. Rob Brown and Sean Booth’s 1991 LP under the moniker came and very quickly went on Manchester’s Skam label, where another purported Autechre offshoot, Gescom, put forth its peculiar discography. In the more than 20 years that have passed since it dropped, it’s developed the kind of mythic aura (and Discogs prices) that such prequels occasionally emanate. Having been far, far too young to experience Lego Feet the first time around (and too poor, or at least not desperately curious enough, to seek out the original vinyl release), I was thrilled to see Skam’s expanded CD reissue in my local record shop this winter. Skam’s website reports that, “due to the amount of death threats, begging letters, and ransom notes,” Lego Feet will once again be available on vinyl soon. And I’m genuinely thrilled to report it offers more than just a curio collection for Autechre completists: while the aforementioned will undoubtedly appreciate a window into Brown and Booth before they’d fully come into their Autechreness, students of dance music in general will enjoy hearing the gamut of 1980s dance music tropes cracking at their foundations.

To speak of Lego Feet as anything but a single work is basically pointless: as on the original, where the usual visual delineations between cuts were absent, the CD contains no individual tracks, just four lengthy CD skip points packed sardine-like with shorter pieces. Start the thing up and you’re quickly caught in a web of punchy 303 lines, turntable cuts, noisy drum machines, and ever-present tape hiss — at its release, a kind of textbook summation of electronic dance music thus far. But Lego Feet’s soundworld hardly sounds like the work of producers content to merely report on a decade of musical trends and technologies. DJs will find no bangers here, just the stuff of bangers past pushed to the limits of genre-recognition. To my ears, Lego Feet is the sound of the 80s beset with scowl and acne, an agitated and deeply angsty iteration of musics embracing their awesomely awkward adolescence. Autechre fans will certainly draw parallels with Incunabula, the duo’s debut-in-earnest, and legions of outspoken Discogs doubters may find it their most easily digestible record save Amber. But the essence of what made Autechre Autechre — that willingness to let the bugs in your code evolve into complex organisms, no matter how sinister their machinations — is only suggested here. If Warp’s massive (and essential) EPS 1991 – 2002 reissue brought that essence into focus like no other single Autechre missive could, then Lego Feet shows where the group began carving out its singular niche — not to mention whence came some of the weirdest electronic excursions of the 1990s.

[Type Records]

Up on techno’s Mount Olympus sits Chain Reaction, content in the fact that few techno labels have ever been quite so revered. Where Basic Channel invented and perfected a sound, they drafted a team of like-minded cohorts to expand that sound, and records such as Vladislav Delay’s Multila and Vainqueur’s Elevation have few equals. Unfortunately, some of this stuff remains rather difficult to find (unlike Ernestus and von Oswald’s own work), and the task of reissuing it has been left to other institutions. Enter Type Records, a label that has consistently wandered the outskirts of techno without getting its proverbial feet wet. Their first “proper” techno record comes in the form of a reissue of Biokinetics, the fabled work of Porter Ricks (Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig) and Chain Reaction’s first CD release. Like pretty much all of the CDs on Chain Reaction, this was mostly a collection of previously released 12″s, but the label and its artists had such a consistent sound that the CDs often flowed like proper albums.

As far as how the album sounds sonically, all the usual touchstones are represented: the steady thump, thump, thump of the kick cutting through leagues of hazy materials, the glacial pace at which those elements evolve, the extended runtimes. Dub techno has always seemed to have a very terrestrial, elemental quality to it, and these tracks reflect that in spades, especially given the explicit nautical references in the titles. “Port Gentil” and “Port of Call” are exemplary pieces of techno regardless of genre, but for those well versed in this scene’s history, the album contains few surprises. The notable exception, and clear highlight of the album, is “Biokinetics 2,” a cavernous, engrossing piece of music that has much more to do with Köner’s trilogy of dark drone works (also reissued by Type) than anything else on the album’s two pieces of wax.

The Nuba “suite” of tracks is the other standout moment, clicking away with mauled rhythms that have seemingly very little respect for the 4/4 kick’s sense of time. Everything here is immaculately produced and results in a deeply satisfying listen, but it’s a little difficult to shake the feeling of déjà vu. Biokinetics is very clearly a landmark piece of music that should be tracked down and purchased without hesitation, but the heads who have long deified this stuff will find there’s not a whole lot new to discover. How exciting (or not) a reissue is tends to come down to one’s familiarity with the scene that it came from, and given that the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction family is a permanent member of techno’s canon, I can imagine lots of Porter Ricks virgins enjoying the hell out of Biokinetics, but not necessarily having their minds blown.

[Further Records]

Expectations can be dangerous. As record buyers, we bank on our expectations to guide us (eg. I’ll usually pull a Strictly Rhythm record before 1994 and not bother with anything after). We’re told to generally not be judgmental in life or form preconceptions, but with music these preconcieved notions are among the few things keeping us sane. So when it was announced that Donato Dozzy’s production partner Nuel would be putting out an album on Further Records, the corners of my brain that sort through Discogs pages and past techno news cycles fired up and informed me this would probably be somewhat similar to Dozzy’s K album. The duo’s coveted collaborations fetch fortunes, and Nuel’s solo work up to this point hasn’t been totally dissimilar to Dozzy’s. So while I expected an unusual take on techno, I didn’t expect something with tenuous-at-best ties to it.

Putting the needle on Trance Mutation unveils a world populated by some of the least techno sounds in existence: tabla and guitar. So many of the sounds on this album are organic that at first blush it seems wrong to even relate it to techno or electronic music as a whole; but one listen to opener, “Mentalism,” reveals a strain of music that has much in common with the shamanistic techno often found emanating out of teepees on Japanese mountaintops. Far from pulling a Brandt Brauer Frick or Elektro Guzzi, where bands using acoustic instruments make techno compatible music (often interestingly and enjoyably), Nuel made music that is decidedly removed from the contemporary club landscape. So while you likely won’t hear cuts like “Vibration” out at Berghain, it sounds like it could have been right at home at Roman orgies (a first-century Lab.Oratory?), with Maenads swaying to Nuel’s rhythms while off their heads on peyote.

It’s rather easy to tie Trance Mutation to the classical world, given its recording on the coast of the Adriatic and the use of truly timeless percussion. And while this record gets a lot of plays from me on Sundays as a mental salve after the weekend’s activities, it’s just as packed with hedonism as your favorite Radio Slave ketamine jam. Few records have toyed with my expectations so much recently, and it’s heartening to report that Nuel, in doing so, released a really stellar piece of work. It’s the kind of record that sounds like nothing else out there, even though Nuel could have undoubtedly made a great album by doing what was expected of him. This bucking of both trends and expectations is an admirable move in and of itself. Rather than being idiosyncratic for idiosyncrasy’s sake, Trance Mutation is, at the end of the day, an honest album from someone who sounds like they’ve been wanting to put out this music from day one. Trance Mutation as a title is particularly emblematic: few records reach the kind of hypnotism achieved here. Look no further for the soundtrack to your next bacchanalia.

[R&S Records]

Space Dimension Controller seemed to just suddenly appear as one of those artists with a fully-formed identity, whose work cribbed from familiar but not-quite-fashionable artifacts of the past, just enough to grab the attention of aesthetes but also rope in dance music outsiders with his seductive blend of melody and sensual rhythm. Taking the silkiest bits from Detroit house and techno, the Irishman was a bit like a more polished Kyle Hall (with whom he’s since collaborated), but his last release, the mammoth R&S doublepack Temporary Thrillz, seemed to show him stalling stylistically even if it was still executed with style and grace.

Since Thrillz there’s been talk of an SDC album, and in typically gratuitous fashion Jack Hamill and R&S end the year with a 49-minute “prequel” to said long-player. But don’t be discouraged by the diminutive “prequel” tag — The Pathway to Tiraquon6 is essentially an album in its own right. Better yet, it’s Hamill’s most confident work yet, finally branching out from the pitter-patter, synth-appendaged house he’s made his name on. The difference is pronounced right from the beginning: “2257 AD” is a chugging synth landcrawler, like a 2011 update on Alan Parsons Project’s ubiquitous “Sirius,” faux-melodrama and all. From there the Controller indulges himself in some jittery electro scuttles: “Pulsovian Invasion” makes good on the other half of his music’s obvious debt to Drexciya, and “Usurper” is the toughest thing he’s put to his name yet, grounding the producer’s usual airy fluffiness with real grit.

The record’s second half is a little more business-as-usual, but it’s not merely a retread of Temporary Thrillz (which was itself already something of a retread of Hamill’s first two EPs). He returns to the silky melodies and funk inflections but lets them twirl out into wide-open space, with hesitant percussion and delicate beats on tracks like “Max Tiraquon” and “Tiraquon’s Return (A New Home).” (Sensing a theme here?) The only time the whole “prequel” thing raises its head is the record’s “closer,” which feels more like a tantalizing “to be continued” ending than anything else. “Closing Titles” revisits the late-70s pop-prog touches of “2257 AD,” with its searing guitar and Autonomic soundscape. It’s a very different ending for a Space Dimension Controller record, but Pathway to Tiraquon6 is quite different in itself. I’ll admit that with the advent of Temporary Thrillz I was starting to get sick of SDC’s very particular sound, but he’s got me all worked up again. And really, even this “prequel” is great — just in case we forgot how potent a talent he really is.

[Ostgut Ton]

Aside from the occasional reissue campaign, dance music artists are not known for spending much time with their back catalogs. Whether you chalk this up a mercurial, fashion-conscious culture or most producers’ tendency to release and move on, many artists tend to identify with their past only as part of their CV (or legacy in the case of careerists). Ever the iconoclast, Luke Slater admitted to bucking that trend when writing the fifth Planetary Assault Systems album. “I looked back to The Drone Sector for inspiration,” he told Richard Brophy, continuing, “I love that LP and I feel that it gets overlooked… it almost felt as if I hadn’t written it.” Given the fathomless depths of his oeuvre under a dozen aliases it’s little surprise Slater feels somewhat detached from the 1997 album. But it’s quite striking to think the second PAS LP was a touchstone for the newest more than a decade later. This goes a long way in explaining why The Messenger finds Planetary Assault Systems pulling back on the throttle after the all-out blitzkrieg that was 2009′s Temporary Suspension.

Despite its stated reference point, The Messenger has just as much in common with all previous PAS albums except Temporary Suspension, mixing beatless experiments and mid-tempo techno pieces with more rigorous cuts. But even by those standards it’s a measured, heady record — more akin to a psychological thriller than an explosive sci-fi blockbuster. Its ominous atmosphere is one notable holdover from Temporary Suspension, fomenting pits of dread in listeners’ stomachs with an assortment of unearthly drones and queasy chord sequences while Slater’s usually ferocious drums play supporting roles. After the pleasant tone bath of “Railer (Further Exploration),” The Messenger reveals its true colors on “Beauty In the Fear,” a jaw-clenching crawl through a cavernous passage lined with snarling synthetic creatures. “Human Like Us” is the direct descendant of The Drone Sector‘s “Dungeon,” its familiar, sickly sweet bell patterns bearing light percussive touches as an abused guitar chord fumbles below. Slater intensifies this approach on “Bell Blocker,” which sounds like a distant, coal-fired locomotive warning those ahead with the clang of cowbells and high pitched whines.

An album this intent on unsettling its audience would be a tough sell if not for its largely assiduous sequencing. From its humble opening The Messenger gets more menacing both in tone and the physicality of its percussion with almost every track — the drifting “Movement 12″ being the notable exception. But even when it’s churning bones into butter on “Call From The East” or cranking out eerie electric piano progressions on “Kray Squid,” there’s a modicum of restraint to keep you guessing when the metaphorical hammer will fall. That moment finally arrives on the ninth track, “Rip The Cut,” unleashing all the pent-up tension with torrents of overdriven, syncopated drum triplets. Unfortunately the album loses steam and appeal when it doesn’t maintain that intensity in the last three tracks. There’s a sense the sub-aquatic squelch of “Motif” and paint-PAS-by-numbers “Cold Bolster” would’ve felt less lackluster placed earlier in the order. That said, the machine funk of “Black Tea” is an effective closer, thrumming with nervous energy before disintegrating in squalls of white noise.

The inherent risk of Slater reconnecting with his earlier releases to create new work is that listeners can justifiably claim The Messenger is merely a lateral move for Planetary Assault Systems. Yet that doesn’t make his choice to scale back the aggression and require more careful listening any less brave, knowing that doing so could alienate fans who only just cottoned on with Temporary Suspension. It also can’t take away from the richness of Slater’s sound design, which is meticulous enough to fully sell his haunting vision without resorting to brutality and far more intensely detailed than any PAS material before it. To this end his choice of inspiration proves fruitful, allowing Slater to refine his well established sound while keeping his fans checking behind their curtains for lurkers. Message received.

[Brainfeeder]

Of the Los Angeles beat scene, Teebs is perhaps the artist with the fastest rise to prominence. A long time associate of the Brainfeeder and My Hollow Drum camps, he has been honing his compositions into delicate mixtures of fractured beats and elegant melodies since his debut in 2009. After releasing atmospheric EPs and mixtapes, his debut album Ardour felt curiously sterile and overproduced when compared with his charmingly off-the-cuff earlier productions. It’s fantastic, then, that he assembled Collections 01, a short compilation of ideas with the feel of a mixtape. Instead of a complete album statement, the music appears to capture a specific time in one musician’s growth.

Much like hip-hop mixtapes, there are a few tracks which play out long samples without much evidence of many hours spent manipulating or editing. The string melodies of “Cook, Clean, Pay The Rent (New House Version)” are one early example that’s immediately followed by “Pretty Polly,” containing a long vocal sample as its anchor. These two songs are wrapped in Teebs’ dusty and off-beat rhythms, but are given a compellingly haphazard atmosphere through the sample combinations. In a way, it’s like pulling and collating sound from the radio onto tapes, letting songs bleed into each other once in awhile. The stop-and-start string samples of opener “Just The Yellow Bits” have a similar feeling of being blended in from another channel before settling into the groove.

The atmospheric middle trilogy of “Jahara,” Verbena Tea” (with Rebekah Raff), and “Your Favorite Weekday” lead into one of the most finished sounding songs on Collections 01. “LSP” features another Brainfeeder member, Austin Peralta on piano, and it slowly unfurls amidst hypnotic water sounds and minimal percussion. It’s an effecting mood piece, certainly fitting Teebs’ goal of capturing moments in time. Even though the songs on Collections 01 bear similarities to Ardour, the record’s most arresting elements arrive where they diverge. While Ardour felt like one long composition with many pieces, this release shows off different sides of Teebs’ production. The percussion on closer “Yellow More New” is more staccato, while the melody sounds like an inverse to it’s counterpart opener “Just The Yellow Bits.” As he closes the loop with this variation, Teebs wraps up this musical time capsule with a new facet and opens his mind for future explorations.

[Cómeme]

It’s been a few years since Cómeme, Matias Aguayo’s boombox-centric label/lifestyle/philosophy-of-sorts, sent ripples out from the normally placid-ish Kompakt family. Though the tunes (Aguayo’s “Bo Jack” led the charge) certainly had an impact in dance music, you sensed they weren’t so much the stuff of pitch-black clubs as they were of city streets, of the urban outdoors on long, sweltering summer afternoons. Rather than sound labored over, these often split-sided 12″s felt like they’d been thrown together over a few ice-cold beers, which is in no way a slight. After a relatively slow 2010, the label has been picking up steam again this year, and Cómeme staple Rebolledo’s debut LP, Super Vato, is the centerpiece of the uptick. Once again, it’s a deeply collaborative work emphasizing a certain laid-backness we don’t find very often in club music.

On the one hand, keeping things this loose for nearly a full hour is a good thing. Super Vato always has a smile on its face, with none of its 10 driving grooves taking itself very seriously. Artists often seem to approach albums as forums for solidifying their sound or advancing their aesthetic, but Super Vato doesn’t exactly have those concerns. Instead, the Mexican-born producer makes a techno album of sorts intent on drawing our attention to the stick so much of the stuff has up its ass by comparison. The album opens with “Canivalón,” a track combining the drive and ‘tude of rock with a club-indebted emphasis on atmospherics, and it sets the tone for the remainder of the record; nearly every track, in fact, could be described in much the same way.

That emphasis on mood, though, is also Super Vato‘s main pitfall: the tracks each stake out very specific territory but don’t really do much else. Once Rebolledo settles into a chord progression, as he does on the utterly and aptly feel-good “Positivísimo feat. Raquel Wolff,” you’ll have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers. Sometimes, like with less-than-melodic numbers “Steady Gear Rebo Maschine” and “La Pena feat. Matias Aguayo & Diegors,” the monolithic approach really works; slinky album highlight “Meet Me At TOPAZdeluxe” evokes driving big-room beats with a straight-faced silliness that’s truly contagious. Tracks with more color, though, like “Corvette Ninja” or “Super Vatos,” start to feel a bit like half-formed jams. It’d be great to hear these ideas developed a bit further, maybe even molded into legitimate songs (as Aguayo often manages to do with his own material), but I may be missing the point: I’m not sure these tracks are trying to create club vibes so much as channel them through Rebolledo and company’s own idiosyncratic means. So while you may not find straightforward floor fodder here, you’ll surely find something relatable, maybe even downright poignant.

[Honest Jon's Records]

Even though he began his career in partnerships with Appleblim, Gatekeeper, Mordant Music, and others, it’s difficult not to think of Shackleton as a lone wolf. Over the last few years, releases like Three EPs and Fabric 55 have solidified his voice as one of the most individual in dance music. Pinch, Shackleton’s collaborator here, has worked alone just as much, but his sound tends to be a bit more malleable. Last year’s Croydon House revealed a new willingness to experiment with more energetic takes on dubstep sonics, and that sensibility is manifested on Pinch & Shackleton.

It would be quite a task to pinpoint exactly who’s contributing what, but the LP does bear a strong resemblance to the heady, pressurized atmosphere of the aforementioned Shackleton albums. Moreover, it matches their rhythmic complexity, combining an array of rolling syncopations — composed of synthetic and organic drums alike — with hulking, snakelike sub lines. The resultant undercurrent has such a commanding presence that it’s almost easier to define the tracks by their slight deviations from one another.

“Cracks In The Pleasuredome” is an ideal opener, building from sparse dubbiness into steely synths that sound like storm clouds rolling in, matched by a tripping rhythm underneath. The ominousness introduced here is furthered in the tracks that follow. “Jellybones” melds an urgent, sometimes reversed pattern of something resembling a cowbell with solemn church organ, while the spacious “Torn and Submerged” is the closest the release gets to traditional dubstep, hooked almost entirely by its booming bass line. The dramatic pads on “Rooms Within a Room” usher in a cinematic midsection — “Selfish Greedy Life” formulates around one of Shackleton’s trademark self-help samples, constantly repeated and tweaked above muscular plumes of bass weight until the track breaks into a kinked, hypnotic second half. If the record has a centerpiece, it’s definitely “Levitation.” What begins as tense, churning menace opens into a tender melody and then elegiac choral vocals, sounding like a beacon of hope breaking through the claustrophobia. It doesn’t last long, though, as Pinch and Shackleton plunge back into the darkness for the remainder of the record — the closing track “Boracay Drift” revives the chanted vocals, but they’re marked with a lot less hopefulness than “Levitation.” Pinch & Shackleton is an incredibly complex record, and though each track is unique from the last, nothing is out of place. It’s a journey more than anything, a tour de force from two master producers.

[Hotflush Recordings]

It’s funny how quickly things change: when Sepalcure emerged last year with the Love Pressure EP, it was the coming together of two NYC underground figures whose newest work seemed to exceed their reputations. Fast-forward almost exactly a year and their debut eponymous album is released at the tail end of an exhaustive fanfare surrounding not only Travis Stewart’s year-defining Room(s) album as Machinedrum but Praveen Sharma’s attention-grabbing run of singles on Rush Hour and Hotflush Recordings as Braille. On Sepalcure, the duo now feels like two distinct personalities combining forces, suddenly shifting from an underdog odd couple to a supergroup.

They carry the confidence of a supergroup, too: Sepalcure has an unusually restrained pace, especially given the exuberant and flamboyant nature of much American bass music. They’ve got our attention and now they’re going at their own speed, sounding pretty damn comfortable the whole time. Textures are supple, rhythms are given room to stretch out, and the whole thing percolates subtly like a limber live band. The group’s sound has never been more luscious, like on the audacious Who-sampling “See Me Feel Me,” wrapping layers of guitar and chime resonance around a lazy shuffle. It’s almost daringly lazy: their restraint never dips to the near-anemic dearth of energy of the gossamer-thin Fleur EP, but it’s still restraint, and the album’s leisurely pace can work against the album as much as in its favor. This is dance music after all, and the slow, methodical step can start to linger past its welcome — especially when held up to something as unapologetically frenetic as Room(s).

Slow and careful is rarely exciting, then, but there’s still a lot to like on Sepalcure. Much attention has been lavished on first single “Pencil Pimp,” and rightly so: the track is an ideal distillation of the two’s idiosyncrasies, with Machinedrum’s slippery-ice percussion held in place by Braille’s more house-indebted tendencies. The two play off each other’s strengths and occasionally accede more ground to the other, for tracks that feel almost like solo showcases. Machinedrum takes the reins for the album’s midsection — reaching up to 150 beats per minute — with the fantastic “Eternally Yrs” and the paranoid twitch of “Yuh Nuh See,” but they’re embellished with a polished sheen that feels borrowed from the Braille material. Likewise, the latter’s preference for conventional house and garage rhythms is couched in tracks like “Me” or “Breezin,” the latter the album’s longest and strongest track, taking the band’s preference for slow and sensual build-up to a gorgeous climax of iridescently autotuned catchphrases á la Machinedrum’s “U Don’t Survive.” Braille’s ear for full-throated vocal phrases is as intact as ever, and the jerky “The One” and “Hold On” are defined by their catchy and memorable vocals as much as the intricate drum patterns they float on.

Much like the group’s elegant and detailed artwork, the closer you look into the duo’s music, the more there is to latch on to; but here the group’s work feels detached, steeped in aestheticism rather than feeling (the issue of its ambling tempo rises again, trading in vitality for luxury). It’s a consistent aesthetic, sure: the live-band feeling means there’s a ton of space in these recordings, and they’re warm and inviting, but the consistent palette of guitars and muted drums tends to blur together over the album’s whole. Pick a random track off of Sepalcure — especially something like “The One” or “Breezin” — and you’ll probably be blown away, which is a testament to the considerable skill and professionalism the duo nevertheless exhibit here. More like inveterate career work and less like a debut, Sepalcure is a firmly “good but not great” album, a duo having found their sweet spot lingering around just a little longer to see what other pleasures they can uncover. Even if we’ll have to wait till next time for the “moving forward” part, when it all sounds this good, can we blame them?

[Keysound Recordings]

Damu’s Unity is the year’s third full-length offering from Martin “Blackdown” Clark’s Keysound label, following efforts by LV & Joshua Idehen and Sully. Unlike its predecessors, it sounds very much a part of the current wave of fluorescent UK dance music, frequently resembling a kind of Frankenstein amalgamation of every imaginable post-dubstep trope of the last few years. It’s rather easy to pick out where you’ve heard each sound before, but they’re cobbled together in a way that seems newly wild and uncontrolled. There is an element of pastiche at play, but Damu sounds less like he’s copying his peers than rearranging their signatures into some kind of ultimate endpoint for the genre.

If the mad scientist idea seems off-putting, rest assured it’s only half true. It’s apparent that Damu has an excess of elements at his fingertips, but he’s not incapable of reigning them in — the early one-two punch of “L.O.V.E” and “After Indigo” makes a strong case for his pop prowess. The former matches a yelped vocal sample with lackadaisical synth trills and a steel drum pattern that’s simultaneously obnoxious and charming; there’s nothing tasteful about them, but there’s scarcely a better instrument for conveying stupid, giddy euphoria. “After Indigo,” meanwhile, sounds uncannily familiar, its pitchshifted, upfront R&B vocal and rising synth portamento bearing more than a slight resemblance to a Deadboy or Jacques Greene production. Actually, it’s a near facsimile apart from the spiraling bleeps Damu’s clearly fond of, but it’s hard to fault him for capitalizing on such an unapologetically fun formula. The Drake-sampling finale “Don’t Cry In My Bed” is worth mentioning in the same breath, as Damu coalesces his melodic tendencies around a couple of choice lyrics, creating an agreeable sonic bed for a vocal about feeling “no pain.”

Unity is most successful in these moments of pure pop, but its title is something of a misnomer: many of its tracks are departures, and this is where it gets patchy. “Ridin’ The Hype,” the lone vocal cut, features the abstract grime MC Trim; Damu’s Eski-influenced production seems appropriately restrained at first, but ends up swelling a little too much, struggling with Trim for control. “Plasm” pairs rolling, Middle Eastern-influenced syncopations with fairly stock garage instrumentation. It’s a novel experiment, but it doesn’t quite gel. On the other hand, “Waterfall of Light” lives up to its title as its splintery arpeggios positively cascade, and “Cheat When U Compete” features some very inventive pitchshifting. The stylistic hopping Damu partakes in here is proof of his chops, and while inconsistent, Unity contains a slew of surprising mutations of commonplace motifs.