- We haven't heard from Christine Clements since the heyday of Autonomic, the tight-knit scene she was a crucial yet overlooked part of. After she went quiet in 2010, it seemed unlikely that we would ever hear music from Vaccine again. Decryption is a pleasant surprise, then, although it's not quite a comeback. Clements has chosen tracks from her archives, making Decryption notable only not just for its out-of-nowhere release but also because, except for "Nurse," it sits at 140 BPM rather than 170, the usual drum & bass tempo. What's even more remarkable about it, though, is how fresh and cutting-edge these tracks sound.
The title track is up there with Clements' best work. It's a playground of hi-tech sounds, and everything whirs and hums in the peripheries like some vast, intricate machine whose inner workings are on display. Built on odd percussive sounds that range from blown-out handclaps to giant pillars of static, it's warm and frigid all at once. The reprise, "Electrolyte," replaces the stiff march with a rubbery, garage-indebted rhythm, while the wobbling "Nurse" is like cold, hard marble. On "Bad Habit, a heavily-manipulated vocal winds and darts around the drum track. It outlines the Vaccine style in one sleek package: alluring, precise and like nothing else out there.
Tracklist01. Decryption
02. Bad Habit
03. Nurse
04. Electrolyte (Decryption Part 2)