Under his Leibniz alias Berlin-based electronic producer Moritz Paul has spent the last six years releasing 12” EPs on a number of different labels including Shtum, Rat Life and his own Hundert imprint. While he’s always been closely aligned with Berlin’s burgeoning techno scene, he’s increasingly splintered his productions off into new directions, something that the four tracks collected on this latest 12” EP ‘Quake’ see continuing.
Title track ‘Quake’ opens this EP with its most main room-oriented moment as rattling snares and snatches of metallic percussion roll against a dark repetitive bass sequence, before a blood-curdling FX-treated scream suddenly signals a drop down into chugging tribal techno rhythms. From there, flashes of stuttered samples add an almost post-garage feel as rich droning synths bleed into the foreground before suddenly being snatched away by the surging mechanical rhythms.
If it’s easily the most darkly robotic moment to be found here, ‘32MB’ offers something completely different, taking things off into an IDM-kissed wander through glacial melodic synth arrangements, vaporous pads and skittering broken rhythms that suggests Plaid more than anything else as sampled birdsong drifts against the gleaming surfaces.
On the flipside, ‘NFS’ brings the 4/4 techno rhythms back, injecting trap-esque snare rolls into the rhythmic undercarriage while bright colourful synth riffs add an Italo-house atmosphere that’s magnified further by the industrial snare kicks and darting arpeggios, before ‘Crash’ brings back the brittle broken rhythms, welding reverb-heavy crashes to a backbone of glittery, pitch-shifting synth sequences. Consistently unpredictable stuff that’s well worth checking out.
