Ital Tek / Nebula Dance

Planet Mu

Nebula Dance is quite different from Ital Tek’s previous releases. Alan Myson is entering a new phase, of which last year’s Gonga EP was the first step. The music here works at higher speeds than the dubstep and hip hop tempos he has employed in the past, and explores more fully the dynamic tensions between space and detail, melody and atmospheric sound, than his previous releases. The twelve-track Nebula Dance assimilates influences of current music being made at the speeds between 140 to 160 BPM, reacting to developments in dubstep, jungle and, more recently, footwork, yet retrains Ital Tek’s instinct for deep and melodic music with an emphasis on dramatic drum work and impressionistic synths with restrained precision. The title track opens the album with melodic, time-stretched breakbeats and smashing snares; it’s a distinctly early-jungle atmosphere, reminiscent of Rufige Kru’s early breakbeat experiments, but retooled for the footwork generation. “Pixel Haze” messes with lush, swirling 8-bit arpeggios over cracking kicks and snapping snares, building into a dense, rushing atmosphere with held chords. “Intercruise” cools things down with a half-speed hip hop feel, the synths and voices swelling and pulsing like Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love”; “Glokk” takes things up a notch again, running bell melodies and dubbed-out vocals against rapid-fire synth stabs and rolling drums, leading into the similar but more spacious territory of the warm, airy “Solar Sail.”  Towards the end of the album, “Discontinuum” crafts an airy, ambient feel with crashing, wave-like field recordings, relying on a single high-speed tom to keep pace before moving onto “Human Version” with its bittersweet melody and sense of urgency. “Yesterday Tomorrow Today” closes Nebula Dance with bass trills and feather-like synths, slowly bringing the listener back down to earth.

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