Earlier this month brand new Adelaide electronic label Monotreme ADL unveiled its first ever release, Lucid Sands, a collaborative EP that features impressive debuts from two new Adelaide based hardware driven electronic projects Featherstone and Centerpoint. The former belongs to Ben Featherstone (Junglemire), the latter Vince Calabro (Off Balance) who together also form the live techno DJ duo One & One.*
Featherstone leads off with the sun kissed ‘Lucid’, a meticulously constructed, multi layered piece of ambient tech-house. Semi submerged synths rise slowly to the surface and immediately begin glowing intertwined around a pulsating, hypnotic beat and chameleon like percussion. As the beat expands into an elongated rumble, a twinkling synth melody enters the fray, the ante is upped on the pressure valve effects and all elements combine in unison to usher the track to its inexorable atmospheric conclusion.
Calabro’s Centerpoint takes a very different but no less involved approach with ‘Sands’ and sets down a downtempo club style beat up against frenetic percussion. These oppositional forces fit together nicely and lay the perfect foundation for dual glassy bottle-like synths to present front and centre. They are then commandingly contorted and distorted at will with both applications becoming elements in their own right, The track eventually trades its restlessness for introspection in its final moments.
Both tracks are quality and denote not just promising new directions for both artists but it represents a more than promising start for an artist run label intent on being holistic, artist focused and delivering high quality electronic releases that aren’t limited by a particular genre. In the Adelaide context, its creation is a vital development for electronic artists and purveyors of such living and breathing intellectual and artistic independence and a DIY ethos.
Centerpoint v Featherstone’s Lucid Sands EP is available exclusively here through Monotreme ADL’s Bandcamp page with other digital platforms to follow. Listen to both tracks below. Highly recommended.
Lucid
Featherstone (AUS)
From the EP, ‘MT001 – Centerpoint v Featherstone – Lucid Sands’, Monotreme ADL.
Monotreme ADL Soundcloud
Audio Stream
Sands
Centerpoint (AUS)
From the EP, ‘MT001 – Centerpoint v Featherstone – Lucid Sands’, Monotreme ADL.
Monotreme ADL Facebook
Audio Stream
* Ben Featherstone and Vince Calabro play this weekend’s Adelaide Techno Convention as live hardware techno DJ duo One&One. Tickets here.
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