- The Berghain sound is laying its roots in all corners of the globe, but for every mindless exercise in brooding industrialism it breeds, someone will take the old-school techno template and put a fresh spin on it. This is endemic particularly in Bristol, a city known for its deeply indentured dub history, where a number of producers are emerging with a charred brand of pounding techno that owes as much to the cavernous sound design of more experimental musics as it does to Berlin.
Furesshu is perhaps the brightest star in this new Bristol breed, and the latest release for Bristol label Project Squared is his best work yet. The two originals here make use of quick, staccato sounds and leave vast expanses of silence rather than the low-end rumbling that often blankets contemporary techno. The percussive elements that move in tandem in the stunning "All I Want" initially seem to move autonomously, until the hi-hat comes in where its lopsided groove magically melds into an irresistibly fluid loop. "Lucid" desperately tries to wring life out of a pixellated, distorted chord, and the track feels stuck in a sort of ultra-rigid funk, elements sliding back and forth as if nailed down to a grid. Mysterious Bristol producer Shifted replaces the inertia of "Lucid" with straightforward thumping, and while his mix is undoubtedly a fine piece of reliable techno workmanship, it suffers from the unfortunate lack of personality that plagues his own work thus far.
Tracklist A Lucid
B1 Lifted (Shifted Remix)
B2 All I Want