- We’ve seen a surge of scaffolded, deep sounds coming out of Berlin lately. Hard Wax and affiliated Kreuzbergians have been mining the seam of '90s Chain Reaction: note Marcel Dettmann’s recent atmospheric arrangements; Torsten Pröfrock’s (T++ ) sub-dub takes on Dettmann’s MDR (fattened with copious reverb and delay); Monolake and Sleeparchive as ever keeping their respective fingers on the 4/4 with grainy echo-techno.
Topping the lot, Chain Reaction progenitors, Scion, launched their new imprint Scionversions at the end of last year. Now teamed as Substance and Vainqueur rather than Scion, Peter Kuschnereit (Substance) and Rene Lowe (Vainqueur), have just released their second 12”.
The new label’s debut record ‘Surface/Immersion’ was a welcome follow-up a dozen years on from Scion’s first release ‘Emerge’. The deep spacious mood of their signature sound maintained as though there’d been no interval. The new instalment, ‘Reverberate/Reverberation’ is drawn from the same glassy, deep pool, and like ‘Surface/Immersion’, it delves into (even more) dubbed and shadowy territory than the piquant ’95 release.
Side A drifts though variations on a reverb theme. Metallic sprays breeze though the steady groove. While it doesn’t have the skittering pace and depth of ‘Immersion’, its freshness is like cool air on a crowded floor. The b-side atmosphere is comparatively sunken. The beats are more turbulent and the delicate reverb structures more sepulchral, flickering in the shadows.
Another chapter of the kind of peerless, rarefied sounds produced only in this corner of the world. Looking forward to the imminent sv03: ‘Remix Chapter One’ – with Sleeparchive and British Murder Boys (aka Surgeon and Regis) taking Scionversions into darker, harder territory.
TracklistA Reverberation
B Reverberate