Marcus Intalex is only the latest drum & bass veteran to participate in the now-established ritual of dropping the tempos and embracing house, techno and electro templates. The producer's Trevino project has seen a flurry of releases this year, charting a course from playful half-time acid ("Tweakonomics") to tunnel vision techno ("Derelict") and more eyes-down fare ("Juan Two Five"). It's almost as if, reborn as a child in the techno candy store, Intalex is excitedly trying to strike out in all directions at once. As a result, any sense of a personal identity risks being lost, subjugated to the producer's highly refined understanding of style and technique.
Intalex drops in on Appleblim's Apple Pips label for his latest single, Indulge. The title track is booming, muscular electro, every sound tweaked and pumped to the level of perfection you'd expect from a veteran of some two decades. Still, one can't help but feel that, once again, the homage is too direct, the execution of a formula too perfect, for anything particularly fresh to slip through the cracks.
"Under Surveillance" is a far more intriguing beast. Opening with washes of paranoid atmosphere lifted straight out of drum & bass, before long we're introduced to a curious kind of steppers' rhythm, metronomically straight but possessing of the head-nodding propulsiveness of the finest DMZ records. The genius of it is that not much else happens: no punchy electro drop (far too easy), no four-four pay-off. Instead, we sit in angsty stasis, bassline plodding along meatily underneath, hi-hats keeping time up top.
Buy Trevino - Indulge at
  
Tracklist: Trevino - Indulge
 A1 Indulge
B1 Under Surveillance
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