Bleep

Richie Hawtin is a vanguard of electronic music, with a career spanning three decades and countless releases. One of his best realised works sits at the very beginning in 1993: his debut album Dimension Intrusion under his F.U.S.E. alias was originally released on his label Plus 8 Records, then swiftly picked up by Warp as the fifth album in their Artificial Intelligence series following his inclusion as UP! on the landmark 1992 compilation.

Dimension Intrusion’s roaring acid techno rhythms, tapped into AI’s philosophy of club flavoured electronic music for deep listening, and chartered much wider grounds and deeper emotional territory than his equally important Plastikman output.

Raised on the dancefloors of Detroit, Hawtin invoked science fiction films and themes in his music like many of his techno contemporaries, evident in the liquid sounds of the Roland TB-303 undergoing timbral mutations while nocturnal four to the floors cause planet-wide vibrations. However, Dimension Intrusion has a knack for evoking the earthly as well as the extraterrestrial. ‘Theychx’ is a tropical collage of seaside slowburn, where bass booms plunge deep into the lapping waves and emerge with mesmerising hand drum loops; probably the most placid acid ever put to tape.

Dimension Intrusion mixes together the technological and the tranquil. Textures range from the tough acidic throbs of ‘Substance Abuse’ to the stormy flurry of synth stabs and splashes on the pummelling ‘F.U.’, and the emotionally entrenched, cerebral techno on the title cut ‘Dimension Intrusion’. From there, we hurtle towards the industrial revolution on ‘Train-Trac.1’: acidic klaxons growl and hard slams gain speed, with intense forward momentum feeding the fires of the techno engine.

Richie Hawtin’s debut as F.U.S.E. is a truly seminal work, having aged exceptionally well in both canons of club and home listening.