Bleep

In uncertain times, it’s good for there to be constants in the world: day turning to night; a catch up with an old friend; and now a new release from Central Processing Unit, surely the most consistent label in modern electro.

For CPU’s latest drop they have reunited with Annie Hall, an artist who dropped the Tenured Positions EP through the Sheffield imprint back in 2016. Though Hall is based in Barcelona, her sound draws heavily on the electro and techno stylings of Detroit. Hall’s new set Fum is full of frosty synths, snapping drums and cyborg Drexciyan grooves - in short, exactly the sort of things that you go looking for in a CPU release.

There is certainly an air of dystopia to some of ‘Fum’. Several of the tracks here have a distinctly foreboding air. In particular, the way in which icy melodies snake around hefty percussion licks on opener ‘Verd Mar’ and closer ‘Promeses De Fusta’ will have you looking over your shoulder. However, these more ominous tunes are counterbalanced by the moments where Annie Hall flips her sound around, using those modulars and 808s to build new worlds rather than distort old ones. ‘D'un Altre Planeta’, for instance, has the same sense of stargazing openness about it that characterises the best of Space Dimension Controller’s output.

Annie Hall’s Fum is a superb set of retro-futurist electro jams from the Barcelona-based producer.