- The Hessle Audio member looks to acid on this forgettable EP.
- The downtempo acid jam is a style heard all too rarely in modern dance music. Found on the B-sides of '90s records from producers like Plastikman, Luke Vibert and Aphex Twin, these tunes can be mind-boggling, often heard best while struggling to keep down a warm beer at 10 AM in your mate's living room.
"Earwig," Pearson Sound's "first (and maybe last) acid track," revisits that downtempo sound. A sludgy sub-100-BPM workout in the vein of those '90s masters, it's among the most straightforward tunes Pearson Sound has ever released. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But rather than developing or building on the wriggling acid line, as great recent acid records have, it darts directionless for five minutes, the syncopated claps and occasional bleeps adding little to the stark arrangement. The energy builds to a climax in the track's final seconds, a jumble of rising tones and claps acting as a flamboyant sign-off. Those extra elements could have appeared sooner, perhaps injecting some nuance to an otherwise forgettable tune.
"Our Spirits Soar" is more layered, with chords and a pitched-up vocal that could've been on a future garage track from 2011. It's also more ambitious than the acid workout, building up and down a few times over seven minutes. But the elements—piano, a whining synth lead, that vocal—feel too obvious, lacking the powerful, often ambiguous moods that usually come with Pearson Sound productions. The same goes for "Rubble," where a clanging bassline and 8-bit-style bleeps supply the melody. It's an effective club tool, as DJs like Ben UFO and Madam X have shown, but its growling low-end is a long way from the mind-bending "XLB," a similarly high-energy tune that manipulated synths with a masterful touch. "Rubble" is another moment on an EP that doesn't come close to its maker's usual high standards.
TracklistA1 Rubble
A2 Earwig
B1 Our Spirits Soar