- A Forward Strategy Group offshoot, Retail & Leisure promises a stripped back version of the industrial-strength techno that has typified the collective's efforts thus far. R&L's debut is just that: Sparse techno that does little to announce itself but somehow offers tracks that are just as unsettling as its parent label. Credit is due to Smear, it seems, who takes on the R&L moniker and unlocks the horror that was apparently hiding in plain sight in Sleeparchive's bleepy techno.
The murky voices that join "Your Reference To" about four minutes in is key—as well as the clean drone that gets louder and louder as time goes on. Those bleeps do little more than chug along with only minor variation before almost fading out completely by the track's end. "Positional Stability" has those bleeps sounding a bit like they're stuck on an Alexander Calder mobile, twittering around the stereo field as the beat breaks into something that might be dubstep-compatible...if it weren't so odd. Also on the flip is Adrian Ross' "augment" of "Positional Stability." Like Smear's efforts here, it sounds at first a little bit like a DJ tool, but the longer you listen, the more it seems worthy of play all by its lonesome. Claustrophobic and queasy, it may just be the scariest thing on this dark 12-inch.
Tracklist A Your Reference To
B1 Positional Stability (Adrian Ross Augment)
B2 Positional Stability