Kowton - 8/10

The Bristol axis around the Livity Sound collective – Peverelist, Asusu and Kowton, plus friends such as Hodge, Batu and Alex Coulton – have produced some of the most interesting fusions of soundsytem culture with techno in the UK.

Forming close ties with Berlin’s Hard Wax crew, they’ve combined the extreme sonic discipline of the deepest techno with the rolling rhythms of the post-jungle, post-dubstep British underground.

Of all these producers, it’s Kowton who’s veered closest to house and techno. He may be capable of a brutally broken rhythm, like his immense 2013 Bashmore collab ‘Mirror Song’, but in general his tracks are built around regularity and skippy funk.

Five cuts here ride a four-to-the-floor kickdrum, and all nine are based around steady percussive accumulation – no frills, just biting sounds circling around each other to create relentless grooves. The album title is telling: these are tracks built to be useful, aimed squarely at serious dancefloors.

Yet beyond their ‘utility’ as DJ tools, they’re very listenable. Because everything is so pared back to basics, we could almost be in the Detroit or Sheffield of 25 years ago – but the way every shaker, clap and bleep is perfectly shaped for its place in the mix shows Kowton isn’t following formulae, but building every track from the bottom up as a fully functioning rhythmic machine.

The atmosphere is always on edge: from the panic-stations alarm-bell riff of ‘Comments Off’ through the percussion-only techno jams ‘Loops 1’ and ‘Bubbling Under’ to the twitchy ambience of ‘A Bluish Shadow’, nothing here is soft or gentle.

There’s always a mischievous wit and lots of surprise elements, though, like the elegant dub melodica of ‘Balance’ or the funky robot voices in ‘Sleep Chamber’. Easy listening it isn’t, but from the barest of palettes, Kowton has built something with personality and raw power.

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