Bleep

On his fifth album as Plastikman, Richie Hawtin returns to the sound of 1998’s Consumed, the turning point at which the Canadian producer shifted towards a more minimal and ambient sound. If on Consumed Hawtin took inspiration from the sparsely populated plains of his native Ontario, then Closer is by comparison an album about interior space, one fraught with anxieties and paranoia. Its neurotic atmosphere is created in part by Hawkin’s barely intelligible and disconcerting utterances throughout, the first time the producer has contributed his own, albeit heavily-processed, vocals to record.