Bleep

Scottish producer duo Slam follow up 2014’s ambient-leaning Reverse Proceed with a full-length of dystopian techno, honouring the genre’s essence by exploring the relationship between the human and the machine. Their sixth album arrives via their own Soma Records 25 years after the label’s inception in 1991, famous for releasing Daft Punk’s early singles, and still relevant as proven by recent material including their Soma Track Series and an excellent EP from Warp pioneer B12.

As a result of their extensive touring, Slam produced many of their original ideas on the train, in airports and hotels – places with notions of constant movement and technological progress. The album conveys this ever so slightly unsettling atmosphere: from the bleeping signal sounds of communicating machines (‘The Afore Mentioned’) to the propulsive ‘Viginti Quinque’ with its reverberant big room kicks and the nervous atonal patterns of ‘Corridors’.