Full Spectrum is out now on Touched Music and Refreshingly Old is on it. Go and listen to the whole compilation because it is genuinely exceptional, and then come back and find my track in it.
The title Refreshingly Old is a small provocation. There is a version of the conversation about electronic music that treats age and history as problems to overcome, that valorises novelty as an intrinsic good. I find that version of the conversation mistaken and Refreshingly Old is, among other things, a statement of where I stand on it.
Old sounds are not inferior to new sounds. The Yamaha W7 synthesis that appears throughout my work is old. The acid house tradition I draw on is old. The Detroit techno values that underpin everything I make are old in the sense that they were established thirty-odd years ago. None of that makes the music they produce less vital or less relevant. If anything the opposite: sounds that have been around long enough to separate from the novelty of their first appearance reveal their actual qualities more clearly.
Refreshingly Old sits in the ambient electronica space with some breakbeat elements underneath. It’s a track that takes its time and that rewards patience. Which, come to think of it, is a description that applies to most of what I make.
The company on this compilation is extraordinary. I wrote about what it means to be alongside 808 State and Future Sound of London last month and I don’t want to repeat myself, but I do want to say again, I find it genuinely humbling and I am not taking it for granted for a single moment.
