Heogen have earned that confidence across several releases, and The Precipice is the clearest proof yet that the trust between Boulton and Bax runs deep enough to produce something genuinely singular. It’s the sound of two producers who stopped negotiating with each other and started finishing each other’s sentences.
Designed from the ground up as a continuous listening experience
Touched Music has been releasing electronic music with genuine emotional depth and creative integrity since Martin Boulton founded it in the early 2000s, raising funds for Macmillan Cancer Support across its entire catalog run. Heogen, the collaborative project of Boulton under his Min-Y-Llan alias and Dutch producer Jeroen Bax (exm), has been one of the label’s most consistent and distinctive voices, fusing Bax‘s technically complex compositional instincts with Boulton‘s melodic and rhythmical sensibility across a catalog that includes Odd Radio Circle, Inantiphsea, and the project’s self-titled release. The Precipice marks a clear shift in how the duo present their work, stripped of individual track titles, structured as numbered phases, and designed from the ground up as a continuous listening experience rather than a collection of separate pieces.
Eight tracks labeled Phase 1 through Phase 7, followed by “Untitled Phase,” the only departure from the naming structure, and a deliberate one. The Precipice plays like an extended live set rather than an album in the conventional sense, each phase bleeding into the next, building across melodies and drums without signposting the transitions. The structure carries a clear argument: a single sustained musical idea, developed with patience and deep investment, contains more possibility than most artists allow themselves to explore. Repetition and variation aren’t opposing forces on this record. They work as partners, each pass through the central melodic territory revealing something that wasn’t visible the pass before.
A genuine achievement ::
The album shows the full strength of Heogen‘s melodic side alongside their downtempo electronic architecture. The production throughout is outstanding in its melodic composure, held consistently across the full runtime without losing focus or momentum. That kind of sustained quality across eight phases running to nearly an hour is a genuine achievement and speaks directly to how well Boulton and Bax understand each other’s instincts at this point in their collaboration.
“Phase 6” is the highlight. The drums here are the hardest on the release, a unique chord progression running alongside choir samples that play right in the pocket with the rhythm before the track builds further outward. It’s the moment on the album where the melodic and rhythmic sides of Heogen‘s identity hit simultaneously and at full force.
“Untitled Phase” closes the album as a sober and considered final statement after an intense extended session of melodies and beats. A magical arp fades in and out while chords play and sub bass runs through the low end. Within that framework there’s a subtle peace—a piano excerpt appearing quietly, followed by the sound of slow breathing in the background that makes the track stranger and more affecting the longer you sit with it. The breathing doesn’t announce itself. It’s barely audible, placed underneath everything else, and its presence humanizes the entire close of the record. Heogen have earned that confidence across several releases, and The Precipice is the clearest proof yet that the trust between Boulton and Bax runs deep enough to produce something genuinely singular. It’s the sound of two producers who stopped negotiating with each other and started finishing each other’s sentences.
The Precipice is available on Touched Music. [Bandcamp]
