- Harry Agius has always seemed to value accessibility, but in 2013 he streamlined his sound yet further. Where, in the past, melody would often take the lead, these days Midland lets his drums and basslines do the talking. Aus single "Trace" was a bold house cut, but it felt a little lacking in Agius' usual personality. The launch of his label, Graded, afforded the opportunity to explore similarly muscular, if a tad more idiosyncratic, ideas.
In spite of its title, "Drumtrak" isn't a stripped-back beat tool in the Helix vein. Instead, its weighty groove and subtly menacing bass picks up more or less where its predecessor, "Archive 01," left off. There's a satisfying thud to it, and the bassline has just enough of a hooky edge to keep a big dance floor going, but there's some weirdness, too—the offbeat snare in the opening section, say, or the vocal sample, a whisper pitch-shifted into dissonance. "Diving Bell," with its billowing dub chords, is a gently trippy repose. As is often the case in Agius' productions, he flirts with the rawer sonics popular among many of his peers—check the distortion in the closing minute—but he's careful not to sacrifice his functionalist sheen. Finally, the "Drum Dub" of that track is more or less unrelated to the original. There's a satisfyingly rubbery vigour to its dense grids of drums, even if there is little surprise in the way they unfold.
TracklistA Drumtrak
B1 Diving Bell
B2 Diving Bell (Drum Dub)