Bleep

A forward-facing, blue-sky-thinker at heart, DJ/producer/sound designer/composer Tom Middleton holds a vital place in the history of UK electronic music. He returns with more innovation in the form of his new project GCOM following work in Global Communication in the early 1990s with Mark Pritchard.

Right off the bat, we’re in uncharted territory — for Middleton, as well as electronic music in general — as the whispering static ambience of ‘Noctis Ultimus’ gradually morphs into urgent, bellowing strings usually found in film scores. This sets the stage for the epic galactic journey of E2-XO, as disparate strains of cinematic string sections and Middleton’s hardened D&B pedigree coalesce into a world beyond boundaries. The frenetic beats on the likes of ‘XO 1 (Luyten B)’ collide with the mournful performance of ‘Noctis Reprise (For QEBRUS)’ with the force of tectonic plates. The zenith of these combined classical-meets-electronic approaches finds a particularly full-bodied, multi-layered form in the third act of this LP, as swathes of strings ebb and flow across pinging arps like the flow of a great tidal wave, captured slow motion.

GCOM is the new unique project from Tom Middleton, an artist capable of inspiring the grandest drama regardless of his choice of instrumentation. It is a thrilling voyage across this 20 track epic.