ASC - Space Echo

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  • Samurai Red Seal was established in 2009. It was Samurai Music's outlet for what was then called "deeper" drum & bass, more atmospheric and ethereal than the straightforward stuff. Two years later, founder Geoff Wright started Horo, another subsidiary that would take experimental drum & bass into worlds unknown. It left Red Seal in a purgatory of sorts. The weirder stuff would end up on Horo, which became the more suitable home for many of Red Seal's producers (Sam KDC, Ena, ASC). Recognizing that there isn't much point in keeping separate identities, Wright has announced the end of Red Seal. Doing so with the Space Echo EP from James Clements, AKA ASC, makes sense: Clements has best defined the label's approach since his very first Red Seal release. He does the honours by giving the label something closer in spirit to those first records, heavy rollers that stay more earthbound compared to the ambient float of last year's Imagine The Future. Though these tunes sit at 170 BPM, like most recent ASC material, they're hardly traditional drum & bass. When I interviewed Clements last year, he explained how he's been trying to channel techno—by now his preferred genre—into a 170-BPM template. This idea comes to life on Space Echo. "Reveal" and "Ignite" are twitchy, percolating monsters that move with techno's tunnel vision, and hardly beholden to the loopiness and drops of drum & bass. "Ignite," the EP's standout, is basically an acid techno frenzy with a jacked up tempo. Only the title track hints at the more ethereal ends of Clements' discography. He still uses thundering drums, but everything sounds a little slower and gauzier, making a nice counterpoint to the rest of Space Echo. The EP does what we already know ASC can do, which is actually unusual for an artist who has been inching forward with every new record since 2010. But it's no less fitting to end Red Seal in that way, with outside-the-box 170 BPM music that packs a wallop for dance floors and plenty lot of detail for close listeners.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Ignite A2 Space Echo B1 Reveal B2 Vanium
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