★★★★☆
Deepchild adopts the mantle of prodigal son when it comes to expressing a laboratory-tested digital sludge. Like techno dirt sieved through a hi-spec filter, Rick Bull shakes up beakers, holds up test tubes to whatever light he can find and uses Petri dishes for turntables.
The scientific slant naturally serves tech/deep house cold as the Australian goes native in Berlin by grasping the sterile feel of up-down machinery, though Bull makes a good fist of adding warmth in places, coming up for air before moving down the next corridor. Doing its research far removed from civilisation also means Deepchild can plug in and fire away as abrasively as he wants. The icy blast of “Riyadh,” defined by a patent howl of wind in the distance, and the frankly magnificent battering “I Woke and You Were Smiling”, deliver two loud-as-they-like scavengers of the night, although “Rage” manages to hold itself together.
Bizarre manifestations of the familiar, presumably through isolation getting the better of its professor, rewires Christina Aguilera and Redman out of the boxing ring and into the scary webs of “Dirty Cutlery.” Another trademark has “Then We Dissolved” haunting in its hammering, releasing ghosts from their frozen state of playing dubstep’s mournful accomplice. Clinically, surgically sharp, yet always of a complete rhythmicity, Deepchild smoulders in every sense of the word.
File under: Tiefkind, Gary Beck, Mr G