Southend-on-Sea, UK-based ambient / IDM producer Stuart Bowditch apparently spent ten years playing drums in various punk and metal bands, though it’s certainly not an obvious musical heritage that you’d immediately guess at after listening to the six glacially delicate tracks gathered together on this debut EP for Rednetic Snow Cover. Making the transition from lugging flightcases to a laptop several years ago, Bowditch became interested particularly in integrating found sounds and environmental recordings into his own productions, an approach that certainly manifests itself on this latest collection. While much of the music here certainly calls to mind the frigid winter landscapes suggested by the title, it turns out that Bowditch’s Hybernation moniker is in fact inspired by the fact that he does most of his studio work during the winter months, apparently because he’s simply trying to keep warm, which could go some way to explaining the gentle, cosy atmosphere that’s also generated here.
Opening track “Acorn’ neatly outlines the overriding aesthetic at work here, slowly emerging from sparsely placed sharp-focus clicks and brooding synth pads into a slow ambient wash of ominously delicate synthetic orchestration and gently plucked guitar textures that’s equal parts minimalist film score and slow motion electro glide. Just as the brooding minor keys threaten to drag things towards darkness, they’re counterpointed deftly by the more optimistic-sounding melodic elements that end up bleeding through. If the aforementioned track calls to mind echoes of John Carpenter’s sparse synthetic film scores, “PM/AM’ sees sharp zapping electro rhythms and metallic textures tightening up into a propulsive backbone amidst floating, dreamlike melodic synth tones as proceedings enter more well-travelled IDM territory in a vein not completely dissimilar to the likes of Proem, before “Felion’ manages to introduce one of this EP’s most intriguing offerings; shifting from a pensive late night float through humming ambient tones and pulsing bass into perhaps the most rhythmically-grounded track here, as ghostly clicking 808s trace a path around eerie slow motion G-funk synths and treated female vocals. By contrast, “Planet Oth’ sees curiously rave-esque speed-up vocal samples providing an unexpectedly effective counterpoint to echoing, dubbed-out bass rumbles, wasp-like washes of pads and skittering broken rhythms that almost sound like they’ve been constructed from rattled objects, in this EP’s most nicely understated dubcentric exploration. While Snow Cover certainly traverses some well-travelled ground over its 32 minutes, Bowditch manages to infuse the six tracks here with a sense of inspired cohesion that makes this easily one of my favourite early morning headphone city soundtracks in recent memory.
Chris Downton
