Bleep

Tresor present Anguilla Electrica, the first Porter Ricks album to be released in seventeen years and following on from 2016's elated comeback EP Shadow Boat. Much like Biokinetics before it, Anguilla Electrica casts out a net that captures some of the most intensely experimental, forward thinking nautical techno the world has ever seen, while hitting the reset button on the genre.

With the Shadow Boat EP still blowing our minds and speakers alike, our seventeen-year long thirst for this vastly solitary strain of dub is immediately drowned out as the vast waves of static induced feedback threaten to crush the speakers with the metallic subzero smash of the cavernous one of a kind Porter Ricks tank drums.

Building upon their legendary status as pioneers of the Berlin-rooted dub heavy techno of the 90s, Anguilla Electrica sees Porter Ricks armouring their trademark aquatic score with a fresh array of dynamic studio techniques that shine strong through the mist, this is most evident on the radar like industrial bassline signal sent out on 'Scuba Rondo' through to the mechanical discipline of 'Prismatic Error' which brilliantly updates the early dubstep x techno crossover of Scuba's Poppies remix by fellow Chain Reaction legend Substance.

The advancements made seemingly distill their glacial sound design down to its coldest elements: an incredibly vivid, slightly unhinged and wholly unidentifiable shadowy sound, these six huge cavernous techno icebergs seemingly melt before our ears as each track heats up its lockstep groove. Perhaps this new direction could be maybe produced in reaction to the current global warming threat that is currently melting the polar ice caps. Building on their last known movements on Mille Plateaux and Force Inc. the Tresor chapter of the Porter Ricks story finds the duo pushing the boundaries of techno even further out than they have previously done before.

While most 'dub techno' artists look to layer their tracks with a couple of delay modules and splash of reverb, Anguilla Electrica is built in such a way that each note feels as if its placement within the mix has been considered and revised a hundred times over, just to one hundred percent ensure it hits in exactly the correct place. For us it leaves us wondering if this is possibly where Porter Ricks have been for the past seventeen years, locked away in the lab continuously revising and refining these six, one-of-a-kind techno-mathematical equations until they are absolutely pristine and perfect for consumption in DJ sets, on a headphone commute, bedroom or while running through shifts on an Arctic oil rig.

Having not only defined a now widely renowned genre within electronic music, Porter Ricks are entering a new phase where the blueprint they drew up in phase one has been rewritten to once again influence the experimental techno sound of labels operating today, from Frozen Border, Modern Love (whose DDS imprint have heralded the return of fellow elusive Chain Reaction artist Shinichi Atobe in recent years) Hidden Hawaii and the post Sandwell District broken beat experiments of Regis, the shark-like razor-edged sound of Function and extending through the hollowed out choke of Scuba's skeletal Fabric 90.

Anguilla Electrica sets sail in directions not previously mapped out within techno, and in doing so cements itself as one of the most vital, and more importantly most refreshing records that the genre has delivered in a long time. Yet for all of this, it remains a collection of tracks that with no doubt could only have come from the minds and studios of Andy Mellwig & Thomas Köner.