Dextro – Winded (16k)

Scottish multi-instrumentalist / electronic producer Ewan McKenzie managed to make a significant impression amidst the UK downbeat / IDM scene with his 2006 debut album as Dextro ‘Consequence Music’, and now three years on this follow-up effort ‘Winded’ sees McKenzie increasingly allowing more live instrumentation to creep into his lush, widescreen arrangements. Opening track ‘Closer’ manages to reveal this freshened aesthetic from the very outset, with its heavily processed roar of shoegazer guitars and electronics gradually resolving itself around elegantly arranged piano keys and plucked guitar chords, with McKenzie’s virtually untreated, wordless vocals even making an appearance towards the track’s very end. There’s certainly a hint of Decoder Ring’s blissfully uplifting, progressively building arrangements to be found amidst the nine expansive tracks here, with ‘The Pacifist’s even managing to slot in live drums, the dramatic effects-laden guitars, brooding orchestration and trilling piano arpeggios at times even calling to mind the sorts of epic, burnished mini-cinemascapes forged by the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and their Constellation label brethren. While it’s perhaps easily to make convenient comparisons with the likes of Boards Of Canada if only because of shared geographic heritage, I personally found that the only track here that conjured direct associations with that former group here was ‘Ring Cycle’, with its blurred-out, detuned synth smears and clicking, metronomic beat programming. If anything, ‘Winded’ sees McKenzie crafting something far closer to a shoegazer album with an underlying hiphop rhythmic aesthetic, and this extremely impressive second album deserves to see Dextro placed alongside far more high-profile names in the near future.