- Clearly happy with the recent success of the Echospace and Modern Love releases, Rod Modell and Steve Hitchell (Soultek) are delivering their hyper-limited 12”s at a rate that’s becoming veritably prolific. Their latest on UK label Fortune8 retains the deep, dubby sound of The Coldest Season, but nudges it away from the glacial towards the reggae-oriented rhythms of ‘Empyrean’.
The first side is a gently percussive mix by cv313 aka DeepChord, aka Rod Modell. With beats more wooden than padded, and a relatively busy, clipped bass, Modell has crafted warm ambient percussion that gives way periodically to structureless washes. It’s an intimate piece of music that brings you into its confidence with a nonchalant groove. The ‘version’ mix verges into tick-tock reggae, with a (relatively) tightly coiled rhythm and sensual basslines that build imperceptibly until a delicate drop opens briefly out into quiet plains. The illusion of momentum and suspension are both there, in the head-nodding timelessness, but it’s (relatively) cut and dry, exchanging the cavernous grottos and grand gestures of the Modern Love for something almost upbeat.
Modell and Hitchell have delivered a less thunderous slab of vinyl than might have been expected, but it makes sense in terms of their partnership – they’ve brought us in from the cold to a warmer, less shadowy place closer to the equator reflecting a shift towards Hitchell’s Jamaican dub influences.
TracklistA Sonorous (cv313's Midst Of Something Beautiful Mix)
AA Sonorous (Version)