- The influence of the "unremembered '80s" in music is considerable, and it's a force that finally seems to be invading even the insular confines of dance music. Hyetal is one of Bristol's brightest new talents, showing little regard for the goings-on around him and embellishing his productions to saturation point with vibrant colour. His first release in several months comes on the new Orca label, only the imprint's second—but they're tracks that would normally be reserved for the highest echelons of established labels. I get the same feeling from these tracks that I did from Joker's original run of singles—the sound of pure personality and unfettered creativity finding its way into a brand new strain of dubstep.
Hyetal's vision takes the sonic palette of chiptune and recent dubstep and sends it straight into Tron, ten minutes of stunning '80s nostalgia relishing in grandiosity rather than quaint reproduction. "Phoenix" is simply breathtaking, as gated reverb-soaked drums pound at 140 BPM—a gorgeous thing in itself—until it takes full flight. The flight is majestic, synths all varying shades of warm-blooded red as they multiply and harmonize; they shoot across the track, refracting sunlight into anger, lust and hope. The high production value betrays an enthusiastic exuberance rare in dubstep, but it's not all about giddy '80s fetishism. While the main riff is undeniably triumphant (think "Final Countdown"), the nagging synths and percussion-led breaks carry an underlying note of melancholy.
"Like Silver" is subdued and finds more detail in its slower amble than its predecessor's driving headrush. Employing the same woozy synths, the track centres around a downward-spiraling swell of glistening liquid metal that eventually shatters. It throbs with an organic lifestream, working in new elements on top of the skeletal framework that emerges out of that initial explosion. The finale is stirring as Hyetal piles on melody after melody until it's a festering pile of screaming synths that sound like the thunder of conflicted and corrupted memories, slowly falling away piece-by-piece. Music—never mind bass music—is rarely this universal, this innately appealing and this anthemic all at once.
TracklistA Phoenix
B Like Silver