- Around the turn of the millennium, a string of exceptional dub techno records came out on a short-lived label from New Zealand called Nurture. Probably the best among them was Upekah, an arrestingly sincere EP from son.sine, AKA Leyton Glen. Glen has made music off and on for over 20 years, but he never produced anything else that sounded like Upekah, which in the 15 years since has become something of an underground classic (it's one of my all-time favorites). Over the last couple of years, Delsin has shone a light on techno from New Zealand, reissuing Upekah along with another Nurture highlight, Micronism's Steps To Recovery. They now follow those records with something more surprising: a new EP from son.sine called seconds:minutes:hours.
From the track titles to the songs themselves, seconds:minutes:hours has the same poetic delivery as Upekah, though its overall tone is more restrained. If you're looking for more of that old Nurture magic, "a candle" nicely scratches the itch, with swelling strings, microhouse drums and the understated sense of epiphany that works so well in dub techno.
The other two tracks show us something we've never seen before: son.sine's dark side. "an island" is ominous, murky and mostly ambient—its mechanical rhythm fades out for good after just two minutes. "a room" has a similar mood but a more thudding techno beat. Neither quite has the spark of "a candle," but both venture confidently beyond Glen's established style of melancholic techno. Whether these are recent productions or archive picks is anybody's guess, but it seems that, even after a 15-year hiatus, son.sine still has more to say.
TracklistA1 a candle
B1 an island
B2 a room