Review: Stephan Laubner follows up the first "Message" from earlier this year with the sublime Part 2. The release starts with the mysterious textures and dubbed out beats of "Nite Train", a gentle groove that seeps through the speakers. Next up is "Make Believe", which is faster and more tracky, its scuffled beats and croaking rhythm sounding like Laubner's own version of Chain Reaction. The release then veers back into ambient, soft-focus house with "Deep Stare", where airy, atmospheric textures prevail. It wouldn't be a Laubner record without some loop action and he ends the release with the soupy, dense "Loop 1" and "Loop 2".
Review: There's been a five-year gap since Stephan "STL" Laubner's last release on Echocord, so Dubs Etched Into Relief could arguably be seen as overdue, were it not for the German's prolific nature. Regardless, any new STL material is cause for celebration, and opener "Dub's End" is a particularly inviting proposition - a chugging dub-house opus with all the hypnotic attractiveness and crackly textures of authentic dub techno. Laubner goes deeper still on "The Dark Future", where fuzzy ambient textures, intermittent chords and yawning melodies ride a sparse, and minimal techno groove. On the flip, Lithuanian producer Grad_U offers his own interpretation of "Dub's End", turning the original into a slowly evolving dub techno epic - the kind of tackle you'd expect to lose your mind to in the early hours of Sunday morning.
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