For much of the last decade UK-based electronic producer Dylan Richards has been best known for his outings on Warp and Ninja Tune as Zilla and King Cannibal, but his 2013 album ‘Kill The Lights’ saw him unveiling his more house / techno-centred alter ego House Of Black Lanterns. Two years on, this latest 12” EP ‘The Smack’ arrives on Hypercolour, and while there’s a streamlined and dancefloor-friendly feel to all four tracks gathered here, the sense of underlying darkness is never far from the surface. ‘The Smack’ opens proceedings with a dark slide out into Detroit-tinged tech-house that sees ominous night-drive synth pads adding a creepy undercurrent to pitched-down male vocal samples and crisp hi-hats, the surging electronics suddenly dropping out entirely, the extended ambient breakdown that follows calling to mind some John Carpenter score as siren-like synth tones rise and fall, only for the rhythms to accelerate back up into a streamlined blur.
By contrast, Mosca’s reworking of the same track injects more of a skipping house shuffle into the lithe snares and kickdrums as dubbed-out keys refract back and forth against a relentlessly throbbing bass groove and an icy veil of cold synth drones rises into focus like mist. Elsewhere, ‘Grey Leather Glass’ continues the wander down into the dark throbbing void as looped vocal samples repeatedly intone “jack” like a stuck robot against eerie descending analogue synths and harsh dubbed-out snare hits, before ‘8 Million Stories’ sees some lighter shades creeping in as moody electro-funk bass prowls against jittering synth stabs and cut-up vocals and sampled breaths, in what’s easily this EP’s smoothest moment. Well worth seeking out.
