OS 1R 1S — Tomb (tape)

"There are records that move between genres and records that dissolve them into something with no clean name. Tomb is the second kind. Eight tracks from Maltese producer OS 1R 1S, where Detroit electro, dub and braindance are pulled through a sonic elixir, so specific, that the genre tags become a formality. As Digital Empathy's third outing, Tomb, cements the label's 'sinister futurism' ethos in its sharpest form yet. The lore is its own document: a Dantesque collapse, a young Malassian psyche fractured by events on Terra, a landscape where all water has been replaced by coke. An angelic Unipolan risks immortality to pass one message through - 'all axioms are false in this system'. 'RIP' opens with illbient dread of early Actress, 'St. Peter' pulls a Drexciyan chassis under metres of dub, 'False Axioms' time-shifts in a thematic unresolved structure, and 'Misplaced Prayer', a floor-track with enough mid-range distortion that can hallucinate spiral engravings. That OS 1R 1S originates from Malta, home to the oldest standing stone structures on earth, sits exactly right in the record's ritualistic undertones. For heads of the negative space of Stingray, the unnerving melodies of Terrence Dixon, but none of the comfort of knowing exactly where you are."