- Do you get chills thinking about Loco Dice's "Seeing Through Shadows"? Good, because I do too, and this makes me feel like way less of a nerd. Approximately five years since what might be Minus' last high watermark, the label drops a track that might just be its next in the form of Mathew Jonson's "Learning to Fly." It's the sort of techno journey with an exceedingly epic actual runtime (hovering right around 12 minutes) that leaves you feeling like you could have gone on dancing to it for double its length. Luckily Jonson, on top of his game as ever, has included two mixes that sound like a single track chopped in two.
Jonson's pace is quick (and clocked with his signature precision drumming), and the space he packs with sound is packed tightly with small yet itinerant sounds. After running out of the gate at full speed, Jonson lets his sounds all but evaporate in the original mix's final third. Rather than let this breakdown remain temporary, he stretches it into the dub mix and never quite puts things back together again. (I recall "Seeing Through Shadows," a somewhat shorter track but an equally epic one, engaging in a similar sort of composition-through-deconstruction.) Be warned: hearing this thing out might have a similar effect on your psyche.
Tracklist A Learning To Fly
B Learning To Fly Dub