★★★☆☆
The Israeli pair’s strict set of deep electronica rules gets house and techno wound around a distinctive scene standard — the scrunched cyclic filter that sounds like a tunnel boring machine with LEDs, or Darth Vader’s heartbeat pumped through an iron lung. Twitching murkily and experiencing a peculiar twinge of the optimistic (though only in a dominant shade of metallic grey), Derrick May and DJ Hell have lauded what is an undoubtedly thoughtful and calculated piece of engineering that has left the Detroit manual dog-eared.
Its dubtronic science burrowing through a concrete jungle that’s part ghost town, part science fiction colony, is kind of beautiful in its own clunky, downbeat way. Protective of your headphones in its occupancy of archways of echo, reverb and accentuated ricochets, it goes without saying that once the record’s stall is set out, the amount of variation invested becomes a thorny stick-or-twist issue. Deep’a and Biri keep on with what they’ve introduced, raising the tempo with “It’s Makes Sense” and “Pressure Loss,” recalibrating on “Tears,” but trundling averagely on “Black With Purple” when stimulation goes missing; arguing that the same pattern through all four sounds slightly worked on.
The foundation of leaving you in suspense wears thin to the point to trapping you. Technically capable as a sensory investment, the two know the game and play to the rules, both of which act as the album’s strength and Achilles heel.
File under: Terry Lee Brown Jr, Steve Sterac, Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald