June 11, 2021
Collective Leisure
Past, present, future : of all the electronic terrain currently being traversed by intrepid young explorers, the borderlands between early noughties micro house, and OG mid 90's psy trance feels pretty much unmapped at this stage. Fearless Leeds / Manc upstart Miurra was just about born when Akufen was cutting up audio collages on Force Inc in 2001/2, and probably wouldn't necessarily know early Flying Rhino from Dumbo the elephant, but his Collective Leisure debut Tessellate opens up with a burst of artfully chopped up and reassembled samples, before drifting into sweeping, oscillating synths and a propulsive bass line, all underpinned by punchy, stripped back drums. Support track Fennel comes in two mixes, main version and HBM, both elegant slabs of cheerily avante garde broken beats, rolling basslines, tinkling wonk-keys, topped off with the odd dada - esque spoken vocal intervention. Berlin has always been a city ready to embrace the leftfield, but here, current resident Shan takes a break from Running Back duties and strides in brandishing thumping kicks, robo - Italo funk, and swooping arpeggios to restore a bit of dancefloor order, via his widescreen Tessellate remix.