- In the crowded Bristol electronic music pool, Jacob Martin has managed to find clear water. Away from his house collaborations with Matthew Lambert as Outboxx and his recent hook-up with Peverelist, he's conjured this gripping collection as Hodge, where he takes a more progressive (and we're not talking Digweed) approach without losing accessibility.
Take the lead track, "Holographic Prose," where he captures the ground between experimentation and the dance floor in a similar manner to early Warp releases. Raw, analogue chimes ping back and forth, undercut by a rotor blade rhythm. Warm swells of synths occasionally surface. "Pressure" tethers a UK garage-style vocal snippet to broken techno drum patterns, muffled bass and bursts of interference. Hodge cools things down on "Monster," where the tranquil pads, industrial clanks and slo-mo pace of its first half bottom out into 8-bit squeals and groaning bass. The tempo marginally lifts for the fuzzy house of "Slowing Behaviour," meandering along to the rhythm of woodblock click-clacks and an arpeggiated melody. If we didn't already know it, Hodge is going places.
TracklistA1 Holographic Prose
A2 Pressure
B1 Monster
B2 Slowing Behaviour