Fabric 53

These days, in the insulated world of electronic music, the cyclical journey from obscurity to oversaturation to insignificance (and, of course, back again) often happens in the space of a year. It's all too easy to get numbed by minutiae or otherwise lead astray away by the fickle whirlwind of hype. Rummaging through the fifteen year discography of the unrelenting, steadfast techno legend Surgeon - and tracing the vast odyssey of his creative exploration - breeds a rare feeling of discovery. And genuine artistry. Surgeon (aka Anthony Child) stands tall as a true individual in the leagues of electronic music history, with seminal, landmark releases bounded only by raw passion and a transcendentally deep imagination. Flicking easily from the heavy, sheets of sound produced by his old school contemporaries, Surgeon fuses the old with the new on Fabric 53, creating connections between the oppressing and the minimal that have never been as simply decoded. Honing in on the idea that a lot of "modern" bass music harks back to rave and constantly re-feeds on its memory for inspiration, he includes music from a veritable liege of young producers. Instra:mental's rolling "Forbidden" is used early on and adds the kind of quickened bass texture that has been carefully incubated over their workings as they slow down from 175 bpm drum & bass; and Starkey's "Spacecraft" is used brilliantly to juxtapose the rolling pressure of what comes before it, eliminating the 4x4 pulse and adding thicker, more leading bass tones.