February: 7 bass & club releases you need to hear this month

Throwing Snow 'Embers' (Houndstooth)

Ross Tones, the Bristol-based producer who records as Throwing Snow, has put together his most cohesive body of work yet with ‘Embers’. Both his background as an astrophysicist and his previous releases on Houndstooth demonstrate a capacious understanding of how individual parts operate within a whole – on his 2014 debut album ‘Mosaic’, coursing melodic lines were overlaid with post-rock textures, with no promise of sonic consistency from one track to the next. That being said, his particular brand of bass music showcases polyrhythms and a specific timbre; the music is warm but dark, like watching snow fall at night under the glow of a street light. On ‘Embers’, in contrast to his other records, each song flows into the next – you get carried along by the currents of the melodies, swept up in the stretches of synths. This phenomenon is most seamless in a two-track section towards the end of the LP: ‘Recursion’ builds slowly, a metallic soundscape turned into a dancefloor banger with the introduction of a driving kick, before ‘Patterns Forming’ winds the mood down, then up, then down again by steadily reorienting icy synths.

7/10