ALTONE Vinyl & CDs

Review: After two utterly essential releases on ae Recordings and Primary Colours in 2021, Altone once more delivers the goods for Lempuyang. The label's eighth release brings together two of the most respected heads in the business on remix duties. Altone's deep & pulsing title track 'Vortex' gets Yagya's glacial treatment on the A-side. 'Customization' on the flip gets a Bluetrain rework; with Steve's trademark Special Edition Dub giving the track a dancefloor edge.

Review: There's a beautifully symmetrical aesthetic to the latest Lempuyang release that totally mirrors the impeccably positioned and delicately balanced sounds going on in the grooves. Two of the most consistent producers of the last few years - Altone and Gradient - produce creatively related tracks, the former named 'Day Drama' and the latter taking on 'Night Drama'. Then they hand their respective tracks over to each other for remixing duties and bingo, a pretty vital 12" is created, a gorgeous set of shimmering dubs on the A-side, and some heavyweight business for dark rainy nights on the flip. Both producers employ a modern day dub flavour to their minimal, moody techno, with it probably being fair to say that the influence of Maurizio and the Basic Channel label is fairly significant in the worlds of both. Altone's sound is a little grittier and seemingly fizzing with radioactivity, decaying and disintegrating as each offering proceeds, where there's something a bit more spartan and linear about Gradient's grooves, that seem to undulate and reverberate almost invisibly, propelling these exceptionally mixable, enjoyable DJ tools along almost under their own momentum. Nice work all round.

Review: Coming in hot after last year's Pura Lempuyang compilation is this new two part 12" offering up cuts from it on limited edition turquoise wax. Dib kicks off with 'Cieloterra' which is a devilishly deep and dubby techno cut with fizzing synths running across its face. Federsen is much more smooth and silky with liquid pads and a sublime sense of frictionless groove to his 'Random Motion' while Grad U offers more heavy and stumbling dub quakes on 'From The Shadows.' Last of all is Altone's 'Emergent Structure,' a lush minimal excursion with deft hits and feathery pads over sublime drums.

Review: There is something faintly unsettling about Forest Land, the debut album from Greyscale Mood Series regular Altone. Musically, the ten showcased tracks are rooted in dub techno and feature many musical elements associated with the style - think deep sub-bass, echoing, reggae style piano riffs, ambient electronics, field recordings and incredible sound design. Yet none of these tracks sound like "dub techno by numbers", something we attribute to the producer's frequent use of off-kilter, unorthodox rhythm patters and metallic, almost industrial percussion sounds. In other words, it may be as atmospheric and - at times - meditative as other dub techno releases, but it's also a whole lot creepier too. An album well worth further investigation.