- Savvy techno with an ear for detail.
- Sam Coates' debut for Blueprint Records is a victory lap for the British producer, capping off a year of impeccable productions and growing acclaim. His work isn't exactly flashy or hooky—he's a classic techno producer's (or DJ's) techno producer—but this is one time where the cliché "real heads know" actually applies. The exact style or mood he plays with can vary from record to record, or sometimes across just one EP, though it's all united by a sense of economy: how to get the hardest impact out of just a few elements.
Opener "The Eyes Don't Lie" makes a solid case in point. This techno thumper, at a brisk 142 BPM, offsets the speed of its kick drum with rattling quarter notes at the end of each measure, adding a topsy-turvy energy that makes an otherwise rigid track feel alive and screwy. "24 Hours" works clearly in the Luke Slater school, all rushing kicks and cyclonic arpeggios, but it's the strange textures he layers—from the cavernous to the sinusoid—and the inventive hi-hat panning that lets the ear focus on something discrete amidst the chaos.
You're probably getting the vibe from the descriptions that the key here is in the details. Setaoc Mass is never going to hit you over the head with greatness, but he puts things in that careful DJs and locked-in punters will notice. Ditto with the glossy organ sounds that smooth out the serrated lead on "Hide 'n' Seek," or the way the interference-style bleeping feels just slightly off-time on "Move In Shadows," like a camera lens that can't quite focus. Carefully textured and three-dimensional without being distracting, with records like Working Ways, Coates is entering the stage of his career where he can pump out excellent club records one after another, the kind of things record nerds might be digging out, cherishing and comparing notes on in a couple generations.
Tracklist01. The Eyes Don't Lie
02. 24 Hours
03. Move In Shadows
04. Hide 'n' Seek