Closing 2016 with his fourth release, Japanese producer Tomo Hachiga joins the roster of Madrid-based digital imprint BlackStars Corporation, contributing two imaginative offbeat pieces to the catalog, first of which gets remixed by three artists that have already joined the label's roster - Cøma, Mirco Bop and Dr Cyanide.

    Breakless, 128 BPM 8-minute opener Spread Spectrum Circuit doesn't bother starting with a slow ambient build-up and goes into it right away, unleashing a robustly stomping 6/8 kick drums, soft 8/8 bell stabs - also syncopated, a set of 1/4 hat hits and two layers of contrasting ambient fields, that bring to mind a slow rise of bright winter sun above the frozen horizon; as track proceeds, the elements rise in energy levels and get accompanied by dry shakers and additional, intensifying 16/16 hats. Dark City Of The Damned drops off one BPM point, engaging similar drum pattern and 16/16 set of hats, barely audible, paper thick 8/8 clicks, and various, neatly shaped, clonking, dripping and bleeping stabs (great devotion to minutiae), all of which run against a mesmerizing noise-shaped arrangement that revolves all throughout the composition, making the spectrum all the more dense. In Cøma's vision of Spread Spectrum Circuit, he speeds up to 130 BPM, lowering the pitch of the stabs and hats, but keeping their time signatures, and introduces additional layer of muffed metallic stabs; he leaves the shakers and kicks as-is, making them only slightly sharper, and just as in original, he makes no place for the breaks (which is not the case with the following remixes). Mirco Bop retains original tempo and rearranges the kicks, but doesn't go for the common signature, instead arranging his own syncopated pattern, shifting the forth kick a little closer to the third, and turning the stabs' timing into 5/5, but making use of 16/16 hats and background ambiance, while introducing his own rising fields of satisfyingly roaring drones. Dr Cyanide redirects the kicks into hefty 4/4s that now run supported by slightly distorted pads, condenses the shakers, stretches the minor key stabs into wider, icier ones that go hand-in-hand aside another set of his own, dystopian stabs, and gets rid of all the warmth, leaving the only the cold kind of ambiance.

Release Type: EP

Release Date: 16 December 2016

Release Format: Digital

Record Label ● Catalog: BlackStars Corporation ● BSC077

Purchase Links: Beatport ● Junodownload