Rodz-Konez regular and UK techno stalwart Steve Bailey a.k.a. Makaton is back with a second contribution to James Ruskin's evergreen Blueprint Records. This time, his EP takes part in celebratory "Blueprint 20" series devoted to label's 20 years in existence. Download version came out with a considerable delay of almost two months after the vinyl, but for proponents of crystal-clean, digital sounding it was arguably worth the wait.

    Foreboding introduction Durdle Door uses no beats, opening instead with unnerving, intense droning, field recordings of tidal waves and cinematic strings, that slowly rise and oust away the droning, bringing along the distant rolls of thunder and lonely steps in a forest; for international-films-adoring cinephile, it can bring to mind the opening of King of Devil's Island - if this is a coincidence it's quite an interesting one, given that the film's first scene is also scored to violin parts, and depicts when a mortally wounded whale rises from the sea. Alright, no more beatless business. 134 BPM piece High Priestess is the most energetic number on the EP - just the kind of edgy work we want to hear from Makaton: introduced are the heavy-hitting, unyielding 4/4 kick drums that run under echoing sweeps, open 4/4 hats - panned to the right, indifferently bleeping stabs that run in 5 every 2 bars, left-channel-leaning, noisy 4/4 shakers that eventually relocate closer to center, and industrially roaring, mid-range droning signal. Coast To Coast slows down to 130 BPM with a substantial drop in energy; the kicks are still quite hefty, but the attention here is shifted towards unhastily-running stab loops, whose high-pass is being cast and lifted in successive manner, with second layer of stabs being more resonant and linear in gain, concise one-note pads that make their appearance once every 16 bars, generic 4/4 hats that show up in the second half, and glitch-microsamples laden, soft-noise-backed soundscape that is audible all across the length of the track. Through Fire & Water comes from the similar place as B1 and shares with it a lot in common - same tempo, similarly-shaped glitch minutiae and generic hats, although the hats aren't running in 4/4 time signature any more, being seemingly tripled in hits, supported by more frequently invoked, atonal arrays of bleeps that freely pan through the channels together with 4/4 shakers, and lastly, a groove-enhancing, low-range oscillation that consists of 4 notes and appears in intervals of 8 bars - as often as an arrangement of soft-noise-shaped hits that checks out when the track reaches second section.

Release Type: EP

Release Date: 16 November 2016

Release Format: Digital ● Vinyl

Record Label ● Catalog: Blueprint Records ● BP048

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