Hotflush may have made its name on dubstep, but this excellent three-song EP from London's James Sigha is closer in nature and sound to other strains of dub. As with his previous EP, Rawww, Sigha builds his tracks on four-to-the-floor pulses, quicker and more insistent than most house but not quite as steely as techno, and with plenty of odd little rhythmic fillips that give them dubstep currency. This EP's best moments are reminiscent in feel (and to some degree in sound) with the early output of Perlon, restlessly tweaked minimalism done with imagination.
Sigha pays special attention to percussion on "Shake." The clicking, glugging, hollow-toned, semi-organic-in-spite-of-themselves rattles and crackling sounds all mutate steadily beneath the track's central kick-hat pattern, and the track's melodic motif, such as it is, merges so closely with the rhythms that the result seems more like it was discovered than created. "Shapes," which appeared on the Sub:Stance mix by Hotflush head Scuba earlier this year, is a straight-up percussion workout: quicker, barer and more straightforward, with the beats seeming to splinter as they go. The final track, "Light Swells (In a Distant Space)," has no beats at all—it's closer to something you'd find on an old Mille Plateaux compilation, laptop glitch that's slightly jarring after the avant-bounce before it. Nevertheless, it's congruent with the other tracks even as it departs from them.
Buy Sigha - Shake EP at
  
Tracklist: Sigha - Shake EP
 A1 Shake
B1 Shapes
B2 Light Swells (In A Distant Space)
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