head technician: zones

Not Waving's Ecstatic label catch Martin Jenkins (Pye Corner Audio) in Head Technician garb for a slippery set of slow, plasmid acid workouts titled Zones. Originally issued on a super-limited tape (2015), presented here on vinyl. Over the years since he first mooted the Pye Corner Audio sound in 2010, Jenkins has used the Head Technician alter ego as a sort of evil engineer Hyde analogous to his day-to-day Jekyll, a sort of "hyperstitious" studio partner in a time-honored tradition of sleeve credits ghost chasing. Where Pye Corner Audio's pieces may tend to be lustrous and optimistic, the Head Technician's Zones LP hems to the shadows of the 'floor with a furtive, noirish quality that works a treat in the right situations, whether sound-tracking gas lamp-lit raves or midnight street patrols seeking out ne'er-do-wells and laudanum dealers. Fired on a classic trinity of Roland TR-606 drum machine with an MC-202 (a beast to program, he admits) and TB-303 to sequence his baselines, it clearly makes explicit reference to the early days of Detroit techno and UK bleep 'n bass, but the vibe is more anachronistic, out-of-time, possibly thanks to his patented, lagging basslines and slowly unfolding arrangements, bridging that imaginary, dilated gap between fuzzy dancefloor head melt and curtains-drawn next day gouch out. As Martin Jenkins explains : "It's really satisfying to set up patterns on each machine, let them run and tweak and adjust as the track unfolds. All of these pieces were initially live takes, with just a couple of overdubs and some edits to tighten up the arrangements. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the 202, I can't get enough of that square wave bass that it does, but it's such a beast to program." Includes two previously unreleased tracks that were not included on the tape edition. Vinyl remastered and cut by Matt Colton.