In the comparative few years since 21 year old Kazan-based producer Marat Sibaev (aka Martin Schulte) emerged onto the European electronic scene, he’s certainly been a prolific guy, releasing a steady stream of netlabel material as well as two artist albums, including last year’s ‘Depth Of Soul’ collection for Japanese label Lantern. This fourth volume in Rednetic’s techno-oriented ultra-limited 3″ CDR series presents four tracks from Schulte that range from ambient through to more dancefloor-oriented moods whilst traversing a deep dubby techno aesthetic that picks up nicely from where the previous volume from Komponente left off. ‘Seaside’ opens things gently on a near-ambient glitch-dub tip, with the slow, cyclical crackle of digital textures providing an almost heartbeat-like pulse around which echoing percussive tones, sampled waves and seagulls drift. While the use of such literal locational metaphors might be a risky proposition in other hands, Schulte manages to successfully build a sense of tangible atmosphere that carries with it a vague undercurrent of unease.
By contrast, ‘Road’ immediately accelerates out into streamlined Monolake-esque techno, with some rattling tribal percussion adding a welcome sharp-focus edge to the reverberating synthetic dub textures and sampled traffic sounds that rumble beneath in the bass spectrum, before ‘Clouds’ maintains the streamlined techno trajectory, veering the slow ambient synth pads towards more Detroit-tinged territory, whilst also sending brittle, glassy-sounding percussive textures rattling amidst a tight backbone of crisp, jacking rhythms. Finally, the epic ‘Lunar Empire’ offers up the real centrepiece of this EP, sending cut-up, eerie vocal samples rippling through a bass-heavy techno backdrop of tight snares and airy hi-hats, the smeared-out jangling keyboards colliding with some stretched vocal samples in a manner that beautifully draws out the dark soul undertones beneath. An excellent EP from Martin Schulte that’s also easily the most immediately dancefloor-friendly release I’ve heard to date from Rednetic. As with previous volumes in the series, the physical release is limited to just 100 copies, with a digital download also available from Rednetic.
