Available on: Ann Aimee 12″

When I wrote earlier this year about the diminishing returns of Deepchord presents Echospace, I expressed dismay at the state of dub-techno and its proclivity for endless, shallow facsimile. Well, not much has changed in the ensuing months, though releases like this one that are a light at the end of the tunnel. To be blunt, Brendon Moeller gives me hope for dub-techno; sure, under his endless set of aliases he’s produced a few generic clunkers, but no one’s perfect. It’s releases like his first single for Delsin sub-label Ann Aimee that give me hope; rarely does dub-techno sound so alive, so vital, so hungry.

I get the feeling that so many of these producers put so much effort into getting just the right sound that they forget about the important beating heart underneath, or just let all the lifeforce starve to death while they’re twiddling their knobs. On the contrary, ‘Close Up’ overtly asserts a sense of halting, jerky movement, the kind of uneven swagger that can only come from real and natural life. These big, fuzzy chord-clouds swell with varied intensity as if trying to get a discrete morse code message across, but most essential to the track’s propulsion is its kick-snare interaction. The kick just barely avoids synchronizing with the snare, lending it a slight offbeat jaunt, and the snares are these blurred, runny things that occasionally skip and stutter like a hazy 2step dream invading Moeller’s consciousness.

‘Mobility’ finds its movement not in drumswept swing, but rather in the jiggling of its gelatinous synths, pushed and prodded back-and-forth by urgent bass notes. Underneath the multiplying and dividing chord patterns lies yet another fascinating rhythm, as the dust that seems to gather in clouds at the periphery of every snare hit obscures the kick pattern to the point of almost complete blindness: you can feel the kick, but discerning its exact rhythm feels more like a physical task than a mental one. Perhaps at this point it’s needless to say, but this is the kind of inspiring, moving dub-techno that truly deserves one of those intricate Ann Aimee sleeves.

Andrew Ryce