Bleep

After delivering Dissolvi, his first LP for Ghostly International, last year, Emeralds member Steve Hauschildt now follows up with his latest full-length Nonlin. Across nine tracks here Hauschildt makes a series of impressionist statements in ambient techno and IDM.

Even though Dissolvi was hardly heavy on the drums, Nonlin finds Hauschildt paring them back still further. There are just a handful of moments here where rhythms come to prominence, and even in those instances - ‘Nonlin’, ‘Attractor B’ - these beats tend to be there to gently nudge tracks along rather than take control of them. Only ‘Subtractive Skies’, with its Barker-esque flickers of synth and pulsating bass, comes close to what you might call a club track.

Instead this record finds Hauschildt luxuriating in the warm glow of his synthesisers. Entries like ‘Cloudloss’, ‘The Nature Remaining’ and ‘A Planet Left Behind’ drift along in hazes of granular synthesis. There’s a strong flavour of Rephlex Records to the tones Hauschildt opts for across Nonlin, but the manner in which these sounds are washed out by reverb rounds out their edges beautifully. Occasionally harsher tones jostle for position - the way in which buzzing synth lines threaten to break through on ‘The Spring In Chartreuse’ and ‘American Spiral’ brings Lorenzo Senni to mind - but by and large Nonlin floats along in a dreamstate.

Steve Hauschildt puts his synths out to pasture on new LP Nonlin.