Daniel Avery – Drone Logic

Daniel Avery has produced a complex, deeply satisfying debut – like James Holden's The Inheritors, it offers a new blueprint for techno, a million miles from the commercial sounds extrapolated from the genre by so-called 'superstar' DJs.

Drone Logic shares more in common with the analogue synth experiments of Andrew Weatherall's The Asphodells – a luscious, dynamic depth of sound, augmented with snatches of sampled speech and white noise. He nods to Leftfield, Underworld, Green Velvet; but creates a distinctive, polished sound all his own.

Synths are layered with an intricacy that belies their melodic purity – the basslines of opener Water Jump, or the tweaked acid line of the title track recall the roots of techno without sounding retro or nostalgic. Voices echo in and out, chanting elliptical phrases ("Noise flies high... no-one there to see it") to powerful psychedelic effect. Captivating from start to finish, this is where the future of techno and its past meet in transcendant harmony.