When they make music together, producers Joe Baker, aka Forest Drive West, and Voytek Stanley, aka Voytek, call themselves Terrain. The terrain they explore on their third EP, Scatter, stretches from dub via bass music to techno. »Barossa Dub« delivers what its title promises, with deeply rolling bass, reverb-soaked vocal samples drifting past and fragments of synthesiser melody. Only the beat lurches far more syncopated than in classic dancehall.
With the syncopations of a metallically clacking bass drum and a snare mashed up by filters, the journey through bass territories continues on »Nica«. Above it, thunderous reverb and nervous, tribalistic percussion keep the senses alert. The title track, with its hi-hats, says »techno« a little more energetically, while the bass drum pulls harder with its breakbeat. The reverb remains undiminished, though this time somewhat airier, with electronic splinters in between, almost like clipped birdsong.
The driest, and at the same time most forceful, affair comes at the close with »Hive«, in which a comparatively stoic beat is overlaid by ever new layers of deep rumbling. Alongside it, a faint echo of unidentified hissing and noise. Massive.
Scatter EP
