- Bristol's Adam Arkist always seems to pop up in unexpected places. His latest move brings him to obscure Belgian imprint Inhale Audio, and, in typical fashion, the A-side is different than anything we've heard from him before. "Two Night Stand" adopts a similar palette to that of the often maligned "future garage" movement—big fuzzy synths, cheery melodies and a prominent vocal. That rather intrusive voice adds the finishing touch to an already overstuffed track, a quivering and heavily-autotuned thing that drives the song's unusual bassline downwards into unexpectedly nostalgic territory. I'm not sure the jarring vocal ever quite earns its place, but the dizzyingly busy track has its moments.
The flipside is easier to swallow, with "Spiderdrudge" calling to mind Arkist's rubbery techno side. Grey in all the places where "Two Night Stand" was sunflowers and rainbows, the bassline borrows its sounds (and its swing) from dubstep, but flattens them out into a sexy techno throbber. Fellow Bristol producer Gatekeeper seizes on the dubstep elements, amping up the distortion and turning it into a dark garage roller.
Tracklist A Two Night Stand
B1 Spiderdrudge
B2 Spiderdrudge (Gatekeeper remix)