- Oliver Peryman may have come up through the drum & bass scene, releasing music on Exit and Samurai Horo, but his dequantised, asymmetric grooves have long stretched those ties to breaking point. His signing to Brookyln's Tri Angle, alongside a diverse cast of dance floor abstractionists (Vessel, Sd Laika) affords him the chance to break free of them altogether. And, on the Iterations EP, break free he does. Where last year's Preparations tempered moments of glowering abstraction with the relatively conventional "DMT Usher," this time Peryman is brooking no compromise.
There's clearly a logic underpinning these tracks, but it's difficult to identify precisely what it is. In the simplest terms, two basic elements are deployed: the fascinating scrambled percussion with which Peryman has made his name, and rich, glassy synth work that lends an edge of romance. Peryman falls down when he doesn't achieve equilibrium between these forces. "Iteration" is basically a synth piece; the sluggish tick-tock pulse, which becomes more complex in the latter half, mostly just confuses matters. "Womb Dream" zeroes in on the rhythms, and its billowing atmospherics feel like little more than window-dressing. The way Peryman shuffles through various iterations of the beat is impressive, but the end result isn't all that edifying.
The remaining two tracks get the balance right, and they're extraordinary. The incredibly pungent "Fever Sweats" is probably the highlight, but the more pensive "Her Third Eye (Drum Rain)" is almost as captivating. The subtitle of the latter gets it about right; it's almost as if this music hasn't been built, it's simply rained down from the heavens. As with precipitation drumming on a rooftop, the more attention you give to it, the more you'll find a beautiful rhythm to the chaos.
Tracklist01. Iterations
02. Womb Dreams
03. Fever Sweats
04. Her Third Eye (Drum Rain)