- The fertile nexus between new-school industrial techno, dark UK rhythms of the Cold and Livity persuasion and instrumental grime has lately offered plenty of room for manoeuvre. Acre has revelled in this, flitting between styles with increasing agility and flair. The recent Symbols, for Project13, showed that the Manchester producer could do muscular focus, too. But Icons, which sees him graduate from Cold to its parent label, Tectonic, suggests that hybridity is Acre's strongest mode.
The grubby hardcore reboot "Ping" is the most easily parsed of the set. It's little more than a few haphazardly snipped breakbeats and some lairy synth work, capturing the style's sense of shoestring psychedelia better than many present-day attempts. Elsewhere things get much stranger. "Blue Moon" could be an amphibious nephew of Wiley's "Morgue" rhythm—with added Mancunian murk—but as it grows ever gloopier the grime comparisons become tenuous. "Icon" is even more unexpected, a frantic 160 BPM romp that suggests Acre's had that Shangaan Electro compilation on the stereo (again, though, a late-entry halftime switch-up confuses things). Finally, "Reload"'s plodding pulse recalls Peverelist's 2008 single "Gather," an earlier Bristolian flirtation with dub. Acre reaches far and wide for inspiration, and his conclusions are increasingly fascinating.
TracklistA1 Ping
A2 Blue Moon
B1 Icon
B2 Reload