- To say 2010 was a good year for ASC would, for anyone with even a passing interest in underground club music (or simply electronic music per se, for that matter), be a strong contender for understatement of the year. Not content with releasing one of the best bass-oriented LPs in recent memory, he went on to set up his own label—the first two releases of which have been thoroughly on point—and, perhaps most tellingly, contributed the first fully Autonomic mix to RA's podcast series. That's on top of maintaining one of the liveliest SoundCloud pages around, manning a consistently rewarding blog and generally bossing the post-D&B milieu alongside NonPlus+ label-mates dBridge and Instra:mental. Serious stuff.
Happily, Pushing Red's fifth release sees the California-dwelling Man U fan continue to do exactly what he's done of late: namely, his own thing. Which, in this instance, means a slower tempo than usual (140ish BPM), and a healthy mix of spacey atmospherics and low-end punch. "Advent" is about as aggro as ASC gets (which is actually pretty aggro), pounding swells of bass lurching up against razor-sharp half-step cracks and madcap robot bleeps, a hectic whirl of frantic ruffage that's unlikely to please fans of his more restrained side (see aforementioned RA 'cast). But B-side "The Glow" probably will. Again the bass is the primary element, but this time it's soft and porous, cocooning the listener in its buoyant 4/4 throb as clappy snares and tinkling hats play off against mellow pads and a gently broiling acid line, every element perfectly at ease with its place in the bigger picture. Steeped in the sounds of early '90s techno and electronica, this is as much simply music as much as it is club music, and lush, enveloping music at that. But as with so much of ASC's output, played on a proper rig, it's just plain big. There's simply no way you won't be hopping along as you admire the view.
Tracklist A Advent
B The Glow