If you haven't heard of MTD, you've probably been living under a medium size boulder, because Italian techno artist Nicola Belligoli has been using releasing under this pseudonym for better half of a decade. Owner of celebrated Sonntag Morgen, he's been featured on some 40 labels so far and is closing in on 100th release with his name in the credits. This is his first appearance on Rotterdam-based Self Reflektion, and he's been greeted warmly with a remix from label's regular Hiroaki Iizuka. Let's take a closer look.

    129 BPM opener Endless Love starts with timid 4/4 drums that pretty soon grow to be wide, hammering kicks, a panning polyphonic bassline, half-bar shifted 2/4 stabs, and a slowly rising, majestic ambient wall; what follows is a second layer of non-intrusive, bleeping stabs and three layers of hats - a 16/4, dense, sandy set accompanied by another one at 16/4 that is slightly metallic, and an open high hat set at 1/4, all running above melancholic, longing ambient lines. Virgilian drops off a BPM point, utilizing similar kicks supported by rhythmic, densely placed microparticles in the high range, quiet and short electric bands running in pairs every two bars, organically sliding two-note pads whose high-pass filter keeps rising and falling, two sets of synthetic 4/4 egg shakers, short, but resonant 16/4, with another, but opened set of 4/4 hats, rarely but aptly cameoing, reverberated claps, and a moody, gently distorted droning signal. In his remix of Plasma - MTD's track that was released on his 2015 EP via Nachtstrom Schallplaten, Hiroaki Iizuka elevates the tempo to 130 and starts off with modest, almost subtle (in comparison) 4/4 kicks, 16/4 toms, and a distressfully oscillating, gloomy ambiance; soon join them, chilly two-note stabs, paper-thick samples of 4/4 egg shakers, dry, 16/4 and open 4/4 hats that get high-passed up and down; a rogue, shifting arrangement on snares invades the second section along with additional layers of ambiance. MTD's Remoduled version of Plasma is paced at 129 BPM and doesn't resemble its original version all that much - noticeably heavier, whanging 4/4 kicks are now running under spacy pads diffused with reverb and indifferent background stabs, newly-introduced 4/4 clock tickers in time give way to 4/4 hat sweeps which bring with them a fraternal layer of open 4/4 hats, and once those have arrived, they also entail another layer of 16/4s; all that cooperation is happening at the front of soft noise arcs that rise up every now and then and then retreat into the right channel.

Release Type: EP

Release Date: 18 November 2016

Release Format: Digital ● Vinyl

Record Label ● Catalog: Self Reflektion ● REFLEKT009

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