- The veneer of anonymous techno that Traversable Wormhole has traded in is about to end. He's already played live in Berlin, and is set to do so very soon in New York. And the newest 12-inch even has artwork. (My god!) Anonymity, it seems, has hardly ever been the point of the project. Indeed, it was more to allow someone with a name to have a fresh start, without all the baggage that comes with their previous associations. For Producer X not to get in the way of people listening to Producer Y.
Similar to a deep house track that uses that high-pitched whine throughout, "Traversing Through the Asteroid Belt" keeps things balanced with a constant clean drone in the background while deep techno plays out over top. Relying on a classic palate of sounds, there's nothing new to be found in what TW puts together—it's simply the way that he puts it together, emphasizing the psychedelic possibilities of groaning clouds of noise, hi-hats that gradually become the major melodic focus of the track and simple, functional repetition. It's clearly the work of someone that's done this many times before, the sure hand of a veteran that knows how powerful a perfect arrangement of elements can be.
On the flip, meanwhile, you see why dubstep DJs have become ambassadors for TW's sound: Underlying a writhing bassline, you have a pounding techno breakbeat which seems elegantly tailored to cross the murky techno/dubstep divide. Unlike many of his brethren on his side of the stylistic fence, though, TW's productions are cleaner, headier propositions, lending his tracks to slightly different mixing possibilities than the raw, visceral grooves of someone like Dettmann or Shed. Nonetheless, TW pounds on "Exiting the Milky Way," revealing once again that it doesn't so much matter who is behind the music, as much as the music itself.
Tracklist A Traversing Through the Asteroid Belt
B Exiting the Milky Way