Bleep

Hypnotherapy is an extremely apt name for the second LP from nthng. Across almost an hour of music - more if you cop the digital edition and are thus privy to bonus track ‘And Then There Was Light’ - we are taken into a deep trance state by the Dutch producer, one full of vivid impressionism and quietly stormy techno tracks.

Hypnotherapy opens with ‘50 Flower’, a joint that sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the record. The synths here are languid and beautiful, unfurling with the ethereal dreaminess of Abul Mogard. Their juxtaposition between sampled speech and the occasional thud of a bass drum could, in the hands of another producer, upset the air of tranquility, but in nthng’s hands they come together to form a strange reverie that draws on Dean Blunt and Ana Caprix.

The rest of the album maintains the etherised air of ‘50 Flower’ even when more club-friendly beats come into play. A fair few of the joints here operate very much in dub- and minimal-techno territory, with ‘I Just Am’ and Hypnotherapy’s title-tune invoking Rod Modell’s DeepChord project. Things only destabilise when the tempo increases - there is a fidgety, almost paranoiac element to the skittering drums of a track like ‘Heitt’.

nthng has created one of the year’s deepest techno LPs in the form of Hypnotherapy.