Continuing a musical style inhabiting acidic sci-fi techno and dark-side Detroit leanings, Posthuman return with the five track Nebula EP on Acroplane plus a follow up remix selection from Datasette, Kirk Degiorgio, Nightwave and Boxcutter (under Planet Mu pseudonym The Host).
With a discography going back to 2000, a rave CV that covers club nights in disused tube stations, a further club night dedicated to the 303, a variety of record label runnings and a whole host of other shenanigans and one wonders how this busy duo find time to crank out new material.
Continuing a musical style inhabiting acidic sci-fi techno and dark-side Detroit leanings, Posthuman return with the five track Nebula EP on Acroplane plus a follow up remix selection from Datasette, Kirk Degiorgio, Nightwave and Boxcutter (under Planet Mu pseudonym The Host).
Taking in the original EP first and we find “Synapses” pitching dislocated voices against delicious 303 and spacey pad progressions breaking down to an excellent sample culled from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centuri: “I think, and my thoughts crossed the barrier into the synapses of the machine” before we are pulled further in to our deep space excursion. Continuing the theme of man and machine—”Tessier Ashpool” references William Gibson in title and is a properly deep 303, kick, snare and hat work out with clipped voices and subtle desolate planet pads adding to the detached vibe. “Marrus Environ” spits out stepping drums against bleeps and spazmodic acid whilst “Genetic Coder” wonks into spooked deep space territory, adding warped acidic work to a wheezy organ progression. The final title track takes things even deeper with moody samples, a brutalist 303, ponderous strings and dancing 808 snares.
And if that wasn’t enough to whet your aural appetite, the remixes deliver further shadows with Nighwave tearing a fat new break and claps across “Marrus Environ” before thumping things out in 4/4 style. Kirk Degiorgio and Datasette desconstruct “Tessier Ashpool”—the former slowing the tempo a touch with some throbbing early-hours acid techno, the latter messing time and space into a highly effective clunking dub techno shuffler. The Host rounds things off, ripping in to “Marrus Environ” with hyper-fast rolling kicks, mechanoid bleeps, stabs and repetitive vocals guaranteed to scare the neighbors.
Darkside work at its finest, this is an EP best summarized by a continuation of that earlier Alpha Centuri quote: “In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark,
rigid, cold, alien.”
The Nebula EP & Remixes is available on Acroplane.
Buy the Nebula EP at Bandcamp, Amazon, Juno or iTunes.
Buy the Nebula Remixes EP at Bandcamp, Amazon, Juno or iTunes.
