- Last year was one of forward movement for David Sumner. After almost a decade with Sandwell District, he released his debut artist album and kicked off a Berghain residency. This made the announcement that he was reviving his long dormant Infrastructure label to release, along with new material, retrospectives of his own career, less backward-facing than it otherwise might have. And though the debut release, produced with the imprint's new co-head, Ed Davenport, as Inland, doesn't mark a stylistic sea change, there's enough newness to reassure that Sumner is as inspired as ever.
Taking Photek's ambient 2000 track "Under The Palms" as source material, "Odeon" slowly unwinds its sample through kicks that beat like a heart murmur. The original is sinister enough, but here atmospheres that were once expansive are compressed, like an open-air vista squeezed underground. It's post-club ambience turned into tunnelling techno. "Rhyl" is less oppressive, if no less functional. Operating from a similar sound palette, its synths hang in blackness, each squeal reverberating above a barely-there breakbeat that seems disconnected from what's happening around it. Clicks and crackles gradually fill out some of the space, but the sense is of a landscape as wide and bare as "Odeon"'s is crushed. For fans still distraught at the Sandwell break up, it's nice to know that Sumner's moving on, but hasn't lost the characteristics we first fell in love with.
TracklistA1 Odeon
B1 Rhyl