- Alan Fitzpatrick's healthy relationship with Drumcode culminated in the full-length Shadows in the Dark last year, and it seems he enjoyed the experience, as Insurgent Series could be better described as a short album than what we usually expect from an EP. It's remarkably well-constructed, and varied. He's programmed the sounds just-so and fitted them neatly together; in "Tinitus," for example, there's rhythms that separately vibrate, whirr and smack, each carrying plenty of muscle on their own backs while simultaneously reinforcing each other. The form of the whole thing, too, is precise; full-scale techno is interspersed with more laid-back numbers that massage the brain with regenerative pools of rich bass.
Of the full-on tracks, "En Salada" delivers ultra-syncopated melodic funk and huh-yeah b-boy vocal snippets, while "Redline" broods around a dry, low-end clatter. It's like he took a long list of possible characteristics for uptempo percussive tech and divided them up fairly. Theses vicious animals, however, tend to be pretty securely caged. "Xenomorph"'s offbeat snappiness comes closest to breaking the rivets, but overall this falls short of becoming another dimension to the variation. Nevertheless, they don't fail to interest as much as they drive, not so much bridging the old home-listening/spinnable divide as sitting naturally in both camps.
TracklistPart 1
A. Tinitus
B. Sub Dubbed
Part 2
A. Redline
B. Xenomorph
Part 3
05. En Salada
06. Lost And Found