★★★★☆
While hesitating to use the word focused, Heliosphere is techno that seems more settled, even at its most aggressive, than when Damage gets together with partner Doc Daneeka. A uniter of calms and harbinger of storms, his dream casting banishes the velocity of when he’s at his hardest, taking a higher plain tenure that truly makes him the master of his own destiny. Benjamin O’Shea, a producer giving you bang for your buck and who becomes a locksmith sent to pick at the gates of 4×4 fury, packs lots in for a product that on the level is a relatively short and uncomplicated experience.
“010X” is a clipped shuffle that’s motorized with funky edges or vice versa, a dual arrangement that permeates the album the same as where deep can also mean headstrong. “End Days” is near enough post-dubstep, a cautious threat as much as it is a nicely nudged surprise to the left and with a valuable role to play in the album’s drifting through space – “Light Year” is techno at daybreak right the way through to nightfall – and subsequent plummeting out of orbit. And boy will you feel the Gs: there’s the Detroit head-clamp of “Delirium Tremens,” “Extrusion” tip-toeing through a Twilight Zone with lead boots on, “Spirals” cartwheeling down a black hole, and “Swarm” a slave to the metronome. On form, on target, and another 50Weapons fast start to the year.
File under: Sigha, Fear Ratio, Kevin McPhee