- Alex Coulton is fast becoming Livity Sound's unofficial fourth member, with a pair of singles for their Dnuos Ytivil sub-label—last year's Bounce and now War Games / Pointe Noire—forming a neat complement to the output of Peverelist, Kowton and Asusu. Like Livity Sound, Coulton produces dark, percussion-centric house and techno. Beyond that, his style is rather chameleonic, falling somewhere between the 130 BPM rollers of Beneath and the syncopations explored by Tessela and others. He's also produced fairly straightforward house, but at times his spartan arrangements have felt a little monochrome. His releases for Livity, however, seem to bring out his more adventurous side.
Last year's "Bounce," with its sinuous syncopations and parched dub aesthetic, could almost have been a recent Peverelist production—though that's not to detract from the impact of its ideas. Its follow-up is equally fine, and more singular, too. "War Games" is essentially a highly distilled beat track, but in the best Livity tradition its groove challenges rather than seduces the dance floor. The boxy, stumbling drums are reminiscent of Coulton's recent "Too Much Talk," but here they're even more dysfunctional, alternating between a hesitant lilt and swung rhythms in the breakdown. "Pointe Noire," meanwhile, is a little more conventional. Its pitch black 4/4 thud and woody percussive patterns would be fairly so-so were it not for the rich, smoky delay effects that increasingly dominate in the latter half.
Tracklist A War Games
B Pointe Noire