- Following this summer's Bismuth, Alec Storey has given his high-tech electro experiments a set of strange new variables. The Spin Cycle EP keeps the flashy sound design and hyper-detailed arrangements, but it pushes them further out, stretching the music's synthetic fabric to breaking-point. Storey's chief focus is on rhythm. His drum programming has always been complex, but here he explores strange cross-rhythms and superimposed grooves, creating a flux between Drexciyan bounce and glitchy IDM chaos. Bismuth's incisiveness is missed, but you've got to admire the audacity of Storey's ideas.
As the title suggests, "Spin Cycle"'s swung rhythms are lurching and cyclical, mimicking the sound of forgotten change careening around the washer drum. It’s the EP's most conventional track. "Critters" roves between stretches of near-silence and passages of taut funk. The instability is tiring, but glowing pads offer moments of respite. On "Sludge 3D," Storey wrong-foots us again. He spends two minutes building an agitated groove, only for it to disappear into a silence so long you wonder whether the track's finished. Eventually, a swirling sump of digital FX ditches us onto a thin 4/4. When the drums duck back into the broken-beat of the opening, the effect is strange but exhilarating.
TracklistA1 Spin Cycle
B1 Critters
B2 Sludge 3D