Alex Smoke has admitted that every time he's tried to write music in the last couple of years it's come out as "shitty tech house." You'll be pleased to know, after a lengthy period concentrating on his other chief gig, classical music, that he's got his techno mojo working again on this EP.
"Baba Yaga" is named after a witch in a Russian fairy tale, and it's patently given the Glaswegian producer ideas about where to go with the track—freaky, bubbling, paranoid techno that's spattered with odd tics and an understated, emotive classical underpinning with hints of Barber's "Adagio for Strings." There's a slightly sinister edge to "Mu" too, but here the tempo is ratcheted down; it's woozy last-person-in-the-club business with a narcotic synth drum motif. The Sons of Tiki remix of "Polka" crashes around with 808 claps, an insistent organ loop and a distant hubbub for company before Smoke's original version—all reverberating, bouncy bass keys, scratchy insect synths and an eerie John Carpenter malevolence—closes things out.
