- New Athens label Nous says it plans to explore the rich cultural heritage of its country. It's fitting, then, that the name Miltiades is taken from a tyrant of ancient Greece, even if the music seems to take its cues from a rather different tradition.
The order of the day here is introspective, Detroit-inspired deep house. Miltiades works with more or less the same palette on "As We," "Iw-ww" and "U1.1": fragile pads, precise snares and hi-hats over a subby kick, and rounded basslines busying themselves quietly down below. All three are lovely and understated, but "Iw-ww" is the finest, with snippets of down-pitched speech and occasional wafts of dissonance adding to the fuzzy, medicated feel. "Epk.x," meanwhile, sees the same basic materials sculpted into a rather paranoid downtempo number, to excellent effect. Chicago's Hakim Murphy provides a typically low-key "refeel" of "Iw-ww." The fidgety percussion and fluid sub-bass are similar to Murphy's recent productions, but there's an anaesthetised sheen to it all that's perfectly in keeping with the original.
TracklistA1 As We
A2 Lw-ww (Hakim Murphy Refeel)
B1 Lw-ww
B2 U1.1
B3 Epk.x