Review

Seph

Septimo Sentido

Lapsus • 2024

Seph, the DJ and producer, may not be a household name in the English-speaking world. No wonder, since Sebastian Galante hails from Argentina, where he has been active in the scene for a respectable two decades. If you listen to »Septimo Sentido«, which means »Seventh Sense« in English, you would rather be in the UK than in Buenos Aires. That is to say, this is a meticulously produced album of bass music with a Braindance influence, which scores especially with its low end.

Take, for example, track two, »Azure«, where a lethargic, computerised voice addresses expertly processed breaks and monstrous sub-basses. In the middle of the track, a crystalline surface emerges like something between the PlayStation 2 intro and a lobotomy, making this production-technically tidy mess even more interesting. And, yes, you can certainly dance to it, even outside the cerebral convolutions. At least if you don’t care much for musical fashions and long for better times. Seph’s futurism is outdated and yet strangely timeless. Sounds paradoxical? »Polychrom« illustrates this dilemma quite clearly. It sounds like a conservative, high-quality Warp school and makes you grin stupidly, and thus is too much fun to look at it from a realistic perspective. »They don’t make ’em like this anymore,« you might think nevertheless. Until you hear the next track on an album that brims with exuberant joy, even in its complexity.