Edinburgh-based electronic producer Alex Cowles previously released more dubstep oriented music as DFRNT, before deciding to retire the moniker in 2014 in favour of his new Stillhead alias. Two years on from debut longplayer ‘Iceberg’, this second album ‘Copenhagen’ on Cowles’ own Brightest Dark Place label was apparently inspired by a year spent living in the Danish capital, and offers up ten new tracks that straddle the balance between deep downbeat electronics and finely-detailed IDM.
Indeed opening track ‘Dusk’ calls to mind some meeting point between the N5MD label and Vienna’s smoky G-Stone collective as muted dubby bass wanders against swirls of airy synths and refracted sounding melodic echoes, the spidery, glitch-laced rhythms that crackle at the edges of the mix representing the one sharp-focus point as elegant keyboard motifs stretch out like vapour.
‘Hide Me’ meanwhile sees Pille.Rin’s guest vocals soaring against a fluttering bass pulse and cold, angular synth pads, the breakbeats that flit beneath accelerating into flexing junglist rhythms as the entire track gradually gathers momentum, with more than a faint echo of late nineties chill-out lurking at the margins.
Cowles deft use of spoken sampled sources to add emotional undertow to his crisp sound design also makes an impression here. ‘Sydhavn’ sees rippling synth sweeps and murmuring bass tones merging with a background wash of environmental sound, the distant sound of birds giving way to a girl berating her destitute DJ boyfriend for his inability to fly her to Madrid as the vibe slowly grows darker, and the clicking hiphop rhythms lock in against chilly synth orchestration.
The accompanying second disc of remixes proves to be no less impressive, with a range of artists (the only one I recognised was Russian producer Bop) recasting the original album tracks into everything from fluid dnb to muted dub-techno. As chilled vibes go, this is pretty quality stuff.
