- With eight songs no shorter than five minutes each, Dawn Of The Next Cycle looks more like a full-length than an EP. 100% Silk describes it best when calling the cassette Roche's "latest logbook of tracks"—each one sounds like a standalone entry from long nights spent stuck in blunted, trance-inducing grooves. By the middle of it, you've traversed funky synthscapes ("Liar's Den"), jacking deep house ("Breathe Deep"), dense drum syncopations ("Metabolize The Bullshit") and cacophonous ambient ("Visions Again"). But the San Francisco producer doesn't so much jump from style to style as he weaves the cornucopia of reference points into his tactile, cut-and-dry production approach. Dawn Of The Next Cycle may move through a variety of dance floor ideas, but they all share a common taste for warm melody and fluid rhythm.
This is all quality stuff, too, if not a bit familiar. "Breathe Deep" flexes a thick, smoky bounce that hits all pleasure zones because of its attention to well-worn details, as do the cosmic digi-synths and motorik beats in "Churning Your Chest." So it's the likes of "Metabolize The Bullshit" and "Look Inside Yourself" that are notable for the less crowded corners they find. Roche isn't the only one out there connecting multilayered drum patterns with dolloped low-end and mantric samples, but his trippy sensibilities and sprawling structures cast it all in a unique light.
Tracklist01. Liars Den
02. Churning Your Chest
03. Breathe Deep
04. Metabolize The Bullshit
05. Visions Again
06. Positive Sky
07. Time Remaining (Dawn Of The Next Cycle)
08. Look Inside Yourself