Threshholds

Description

On his fourth self-released 12”, Carrier winds the rhythmic tension to breaking point with inch-tight production set in acres of negative space, in the long shadow of D&B and broken beat science. Now three years into a generational run of inspirational plates, Carrier’s core sense of discipline and restraint continues to yield peerless reward on »Thresholds«. A lifetime’s love of, and immersion in, fwd UK dance musics has prompted him to chase a particular dragon of syncopated swerve and cavernous psychoacoustics to logical, next-level depths, diffusing that dread pressure with an adroit, tendon-twitching precision and tactility. Carrier has been instrumental in reminding ravers what was lost when D&B went stadium and pop-chart scale over the past decades, daring to run against the grain, trust his instincts, and return a sense of mystery and bold experimentalism to what was once a thrilling paradigm. This new trio of cuts eke exquisite nuance from tweaked fundamentals, swivelling 2-step off the bone into smoky hall-of-mirrors reflections of »Cure«, and specialising in a razor’s-edge, toes-off-the-ground sorcery in a recursive, wraithlike zinger, »Scout«, that dips to the sexiest, tongue-tip breakdown, beside the tantric, anticipatory chicanery of »Black Channels«, which finishes us off with an ›all-tension-no-release‹ weapon for the ages.