Holdie Gawn / Micawber - Graenul / Shinkansen

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  • There's next to no information available about the two producers whose tracks inaugurate new London-based label Sylphe, and this first 12-inch sneaked out in a limited, hand-stamped run. The musical aesthetic is subtly different from the majority of what's currently around in house and techno, especially in the UK, based on extended, intricately detailed grooves whose painstaking slowness and trippy repetition owe a great deal to mid-'00s Perlon. The presence of forebears like Ricardo Villalobos and Thomas Melchior is especially noticeable in Micawber's "Shinkansen," which contrasts clipped beats with a background of watery swishes and splashes. It's a lovely, svelte thing, whose rhythmic details appear to slope forward at the end of each bar to transfer their kinetic energy effortlessly to the next. Holdie Gawn's "Graenul" is similarly dry and stripped down, but feels more of a piece with current producers influenced by those luminaries. Its blank pulses of sub-bass and swung drums recall earlier music by Kowton—especially his first 12-inches for Idle Hands and Keysound—and it's downbeat and subtly funky enough to sit comfortably alongside the likes of Lowtec and Kassem Mosse. The attention to detail on both tracks, and the way they wring such depth from essentially simple source material, is impressive for a debut release. If, indeed, that's what this is; with their enigmatic and vaguely teasing artist names, these could plausibly be the work of more experienced producers in disguise.
  • Tracklist
      A Holdie Gawn - Graenul B Micawber - Shinkansen
RA