Dub techno, when it is done well, is the absence of unnecessary emotional clutter. It is that strand of electronic music which rightly tolerates neither humour nor adolescent outbursts of feeling. Total focus, total concentration on the shadowy, faintly outlined contours of a referential framework that has stood fixed and unchanged for decades. Dub techno – this eeriness is inherent to it – compels reflection and throws individuals back upon themselves, without escape. It produces the opposite of what club music so often claims for itself: in its impassive steel-grey chords there is no togetherness, no »we« on the dancefloor. It isolates, strands the listener in barren, merciless landscapes.
When people write about dub techno, they often like to call it atmospheric music. Which is nonsense – every music has some sort of atmosphere, however unbearable it may be. The Setting Sun, first released by Stephen Hitchell in 2009 under the alias Variant and now reissued on Field, may therefore be understood instead as atmospherically dense. The hiss he generates crackles with particular presence, as though demanding attention in this icy wilderness of an album. Biosphere, Pole – who mastered the record – and Eluvium all drift past, only to disappear into the eye of the cutting snowstorm. In the second half of the album, »Someplace Else« generates an unhurried riddim, while the closing 23-minute title track heaves chords into the thicket of self-doubt like small illuminations.
The Setting Sun
