- Having moved through different styles and levels of activity over 17 years, Cylon Recordings found new life in a splinter cell that mutated and split from drum & bass. While the profile of labels like UVB-76 and Hidden Hawaii have risen outside of drum & bass circles, the traditional centre of the genre has paid scant attention to its development—a techno fan scanning Hard Wax might relate more to recent Cylon records than your average drum & bass DJ. The division began years ago but the sound has recently crystallised, drawing a line from Source Direct to designer techno and trading breaks and drops for mood and glide.
Conspired Within's new 12-inch continues Cylon's recent run of strong releases. While it colours between the lines of the emergent sound, it hits all its necessary pleasure centres. Both sides are sonically and rhythmically alike, clocking in at under five minutes and quickly staking their claims. Emphasis is on the disquieting swoops of dank atmosphere and the controlled snarl of the bass, with clean percussion limited to precise time keeping. A bedrock of sub movement supplies the slick surface for the rhythms to skate across, suggesting a momentous half-time lean lurking beneath the 170-BPM drive. Perhaps the record's best feature is its versatility—you can convincingly pitch both tracks way down into techno and dubstep tempo. In these contexts, they become spacious behemoths in a stylistic no man's land, perfect for building bridges between sounds and styles.
TracklistA Artifact
B Sightings