- There's a certain gravity to releasing a self-titled record midway through your career. It's an act of purposeful image making. Whether or not that's the case with Aquarian, the Canadian artist's third EP for UNO NYC, it sure feels like it. You could even consider it a reboot of sorts, because the four originals here frame all the familiar Aquarian elements—barreling techno, full-throttle drum breaks and foaming-at-the-mouth acid lines—in a new and improved package. A year after the jungle revival hit its stride, Aquarian shows that there's still plenty to be squeezed out of the much-loved sound.
A lot of Aquarian sounds like classic Virus Recordings material at 130 BPM—everything is huge and nearly deafening. The drum & bass dynamic is clearest in "Artifact," where sections of bright, airy chords are overrun by passages of stampeding mayhem. It's not quite that simple, though: soon a scribbling acid line comes in, and the whole thing transforms into full-on techno.
"Before I Forget" meshes those opposing impulses better, pairing its lead-footed percussion with the kind of loopy synth you might hear in a Ben Klock track, while "Event Horizon" beats the amen breaks back with gut-punching kick drums. "SOMA" might be the record's best track: careening into freefalls with blaring synths and volleys of breaks like some lost anthem from 1997, it's certainly the hardest. Hearing the amen breaks rip a hole sideways through it is the EP's greatest pleasure. Throwing Snow captures the track's otherwise hidden softer side for his remix, turning the melody into a music box-style lullaby and keeping everything at an eerie calm.
Tracklist01. SOMA
02. Artifact
03. Before I Forget
04. Event Horizon
05. SOMA (Throwing Snow Remix)
06. Artifact (Nautiluss Remix)