- New Zealand's Sam Reed debuted last year on Samurai with a smattering of tracks showcasing an elegant and ethereal view on drum & bass. Laced with live instrument samples and intricate drum patterns, his take on the genre owes a lot to Calibre but feels less stuffy and meticulous. The two Introducing EPs are buttressed by a well-timed and well-curated remix single, presenting different takes on Tokyo Prose's sumptuous sounds.
Synkro is first up with "Echoes." He pulls out threads from the original's conventional percussion, leaving an insistent but uneven tapping that sounds like morse code at 170 beats per minute. The hesitant but heartfelt chord progression is clay in Synkro's hands, who drowns it in sighing washes of beautiful synth and a perfectly careful bassline that grounds rather than drives it. Synkro is a producer whose work toes the line between the breathtaking and tooth-achingly saccharine, but his "Echoes" remix is one of the strongest and most effortless of his career.
The other side is taken up by another drum & bass underdog who has since moved on to weirder climes. Exit signee Consequence takes the chirpy "LPK Sound" and wraps its tinny arpeggios around a distorted and glitchy beat, an ironed out version of his IDM-addled work on last album Test Dream. It's a less distinctive but no less enjoyable effort, and the work here puts a neat finishing stamp on a very promising introduction to one of drum & bass's brightest new names.
Tracklist A Echoes (Synkro Remix)
B LPK Sound (Consequence Remix)