Tessellations

As he moved bit by bit away from the dubstep scene he was instrumental in founding in Bristol in the 00s, Tom “Peverelist” Ford’s records started sounding more and more like techno. Large parts of this 2017 record are techno at least as much as they’re anything else, in fact. And given his ever-more precise production and love of familiar elements – metallic Reese pianos, 808 cowbells, sinewave blips – you could, at first, mistake it for being generic. You only need to listen to a track for 30 seconds, though, to realise that though his jungle-derived complexity and chasmic soundsystem space is more sublimated than ever to the steady kick it’s still there throughout the rhythm programming, structuring and bass tones, and though the sounds are familiar the structures constantly confound expectations. Although having said all that, ironically, the most predictable, clichéd, capital-T techno track here – “Slice of Life” – is as thrilling as anything he’s ever done, a breathless sky ride of a groove. Perhaps more than anything this is an upgrade of the moment techno really became British in the bleep’n’bass of Yorkshire almost two decades previously.