Mysterious Russian producer Delete operates in one of the many branches of the step scene with a particular brand of past garage.
It’s strange how musical genres ebb and flow. Many of the originators of the whole dubstep scene have now turned to house, techno and disco as their sound of choice. Very odd—to spawn an incredibly inventive genre only to fall back on sounds with roots in the 70s. Maybe they ran out of ideas or felt the whole scene had run its course, or got so terrified that they influenced the sound of brostep—a musical change was the only way to make amends.
Mysterious Russian producer Delete operates in one of the many branches of the step scene with a particular brand of past garage. That’s how his Soundcloud describes things anyway. It’s safe to say Delete is not scared of sticking the course in terms of alignment to a particular Burial / Clubroot style of sound. So much so that the name of this EP is just one vowel away from Burial and Four Tet’s Nova. Comparisons and fashion aside, Neva contains superb examples of the genre—and when it’s this good who cares if everyone else has gone 4/4 and glitter balls.
The title track floats reverb drenched pitch shifted samples across ubiquitous creaking shuffle before a really quite sublime mid track flip into distant atmospherics and piano. “Air Raid Waltz” comes off like some futuristic R&B pop—a cracking melange of catchy vocal hooks and bass thrum. “Dead Pigeon” is so close to that Burial style that it crosses my mind that this is, in fact, Burial himself—it’s a track that wouldn’t feel out of place on Untrue. “Warm Street” is much more soothing—with spooked R&B acapella samples rubbing up against twinkling piano and underwater rhythms. EP highlight, though, comes in the form of Module Module’s take on “Neva”—spinning an evocative melody across warm floating bass resulting in multiple repeat plays.
Neva is available on Mindtrick. [Release page]
