Simon Shreeve - The Healing Bowl (Downwards)

Simon Shreeve - The Healing Bowl (Downwards) (Killer nexus of D&B-informed techno rolige and dark ambient themes from Simon Shreeve, one half of Kryptic Minds, for his debut on Downwards. If you're into Regis, Demdike Stare, Raime etc - this is a must-check. Healing Bowl forms a timely collusion between an artist and label who’ve been converging on a mutual mesh of gutted D&B dynamics with techno tempos and dark ambient feels for some time now. It forms Simon Shreeves’ debut release under his birth name after more than a decade of releases as part of Kryptic Minds, and more recently his techno-leaning solo output as Mønic for Tresor. A match made in techno purgatory then, Healing Bowl metes out five pensile, nerve-pinched pieces defined by finely sculpted bass, shivering percussion and cranky concrète processing. Never showy, but with a nuanced atmospheric elegance and appreciation of proper body mechanics for the ‘floor or bedroom. A/SA falls down the trapdoor first with plummeting subs and spanked spring reverbs setting a crypt-like tone and spatial setting which bleeds thru into the title cut’s rolling swagger and strafing, daemonic silhouettes, before A Thousand and One locates and locks into a dank pocket of plasmic bass and spectral vocal recital. Sharuda follows with a ghostlier, eldritch pallor of melodic development giving rise to sepulchral harmonics amidst fizzing, prickly percussion and elliptic sub bass curves, yet the EP’s strongest dancefloor cut is saved for last with the elusive, entropic sound design of S/KA seeming to invert techno and D&B dynamics with vampiric lust and romance. Shreeve has evidently found an empathetic and steadfast partner in Downwards. Here’s to a lasting relationship.