Spatial - Circlon

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  • Matt Spendlove has spent a few years at the fringes of house music, dropping garage-influenced beats on his label, Infrasonics, and exploring more unconventional zones on others. Every once in a while he has a surge in output, and July 2014 was his latest, with a 12-inch of frazzled atmospherics on Broken20 and this more conventional dance EP on Jimmy Edgar's Ultramajic. Spendlove's precise approach to percussion and arrangement fits with Edgar's recent turn towards techno, and Circlon might just be Spatial's best EP yet. There's a chief difference between Spatial and Edgar. Where the latter's tracks are bare and functional, Spendlove's change every few bars, gradually transforming over their runtimes. "Circlon" pivots around a sonar-ping synth riff and a stuttering bassline that rises and falls like it's threatening to rip right through the tune. Throw in the clipped vocal sample and it feels ready to blow at any second. "Eloptic Energy" turns down the tension, a slice of muscle-bound house with a cheeky piano breakdown. Hearkening back to the playful skip of Infrasonics, "Recover" is the most recognizably Spatial tune. Simple and deadly, its taut chord sequence gets plenty of mileage out of just a few notes. The jaunty "Sufani" rounds things off with a happy-go-lucky melody, adding a lighthearted hint to a record that otherwise feels like it was meticulously built for maximum dance floor impact.
  • Tracklist
      01. Circlon 02. Eloptic Energy 03. Recover 04. Sufani
RA