Asok - Inner Circle

Hot on the heals of his ethereal, raw & scrunchy EP for the Lobster Theremin main label, Stu Robinson aka ASOK returns with a quick fire reply via LT sub-label Mörk.

Applying a similar template of contradictory elements, cobbled into a melded, half-melted mass of aquatic techno, proto-rave and depth-charged deep house, Inner Circle is the transformation complete. A step into the unknown without a shadow of doubt.

The title track Inner Circle grasps the baton from the last EPs closer, I Mean You No Harm. The signature stepped kicks and percussion are there, this time stripped to the bone and fluttered with a time-squashed delay and more heady rave tropes. Distant, lonely sirens and beams of cold light rather than the warmth of the rave and collective unity.

Rolling into view and weighed under by tangles of electronics and burned tape comes Plantfall, a number that leans as much on early Chicago and bleep-infused Larry Heard experiments as it does on it's intergalactic imagination and hefty technoid drum undercurrent.

That signature ASOK warehouse stuff is smattered up the walls of 30 Hours. Deep-in-the-night, long jaunt UK rave fed through the Play-Doh shape-maker and squashed by a straying hand onto the skull of your best mate still munching their face off.

Flying through subtle colour hues and harnessing that familiar half-bell half-hat ASOK top line, Terran Envoy is a resonant squealer, a flange-baked wander into the inner self. Soft, tender memories of caring, and nostalgic moments of touch and smell that scorched the mind, are brought back and reimagined, like a small fossil gently polished or a ruin instilled with life. A re-awakening and a rebirth. A gentle wash of hope on the shores of life.