Daniel Avery’s 2013 album Drone Logic was a retro-looking take on club sounds, drawing on a very British canon of dance music, and owing as much to big-beat, acid house and festival dynamics: somewhere between Andrew Weatherall, The Chemical Brothers and ‘Voodoo Ray.’ Its relative unsophistication meant it couldn’t be considered boundary-breaking, but its familiar charms didn’t quite cross over in the way that such music would have 15 years ago – simply put, Avery’s mid-range maximalist tendencies jar against the sounds of contemporary dancefloors, by not being rooted in dubstep, disco or deep house.
‘Sensation’ is Avery’s first new material in two years and comes via record label Phantasy Sound, a label helmed by former Trash resident and acclaimed DJ Erol Alkan. It marks a change of pace for Avery – it’s still trippy dance music, but it’s characterised by a new sense of restraint. Starting with a syncopated bass rhythm, it folds into the kind of analogue percussive melody that conjures Simian Mobile Disco and Paul Woolford, before falling into a reverb-soaked feedback loop and sturdy bass stabs. But it’s not the feedback of punk rock guitars – it feels soft and hushed, like the textures of My Bloody Valentine. If Drone Logic’s best moments were about saturated rave bliss, ‘Sensation’ is a heads-down, tunnel-vision trip into the night.
