- Marco M. Bernd is a bit of a mystery. Like a lot of dance music producers, he conceals all but the most essential information from his ten Twitter followers and 225 Facebook fans (at the time of writing). He posts about his upcoming releases—including this one, Avery, his fourth since 2010—and that's about it. This reticence might work the other way, too. Bernd's heads-y dub techno, despite its recognisable shape, gleams with the conservative exoticness of a pristine, undiscovered antique—so much so that DJs who buy these records would maybe prefer to keep the fact to themselves, in the paranoid tradition of "secret weapon" hoarding.
As a whole, Avery is typical of Bernd's greyscale, bassy palette, but the A-side isn't without some colour. "Avery," the EP's go-to helter-skelter moment, is propelled by bouncy chords that carve themselves into the track's whiplash-inducing groove. It's a simple, mid-set dub techno record engineered to an exacting standard—nothing groundbreaking, perhaps, but its sleek sound design is irresistible. Similarly excellent, "Limpp" is a gentler jog through the same territory, but there's a scrunching sound, somewhere between white noise and foot-pressed snow, that makes it feel as refreshing as a walk on a winter morning. "Prism (Dub Redux)," with its subdued kicks and creeping chords, is "Limpp"'s agoraphobic counterpart. Churning its dubby sounds within a snug little space, it's made of the same pliable materials that prop up "Avery" and "Limpp," but it compels you to tug at your collar as you adjust to its stuffier atmosphere.
TracklistA1 Avery
B1 Limpp
B2 Prism (Dub Redux)