- Covered In Sand is the latest project from Pacific Blue, AKA Relay, AKA delete_everything, AKA Shifted, AKA... well, you get the idea. The UK techno producer evidently enjoys compartmentalizing, and his newest project is reserved for letting his darker impulses thrash free—Shifted loose of techno's leash. "Heaven's Gate Suicide" growls like an angry pit bull, occasionally kicking up ear-piercing frequencies and shuddering with the soul of Aphex Twin's "Ventolin." It feels actively hostile, not quite noise music but certainly not techno. And while there's hardly a dearth of blackened electronic music at the moment, Shifted has the production chops to lift it above the average angst.
Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow—who basically had this whole idea down already—does a role reversal, providing the EP with its dance floor moment. Re-molded wholesale into a broken-beat framework, it lands with a violent knock rather than the original's buzzsaw grinding. The uglier abrasions are varnished over with one of Vatican Shadow's most perfect chord progressions yet.
Tracklist A Heaven's Gate Suicides
B Heaven's Gate Suicides (Vatican Shadow Remix)