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2LP
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UNDRTW 001LP
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After the carnival of chaos that was his Tides worldwide tour and the online explosion caused by his remix of Ludovico Einaudi's "Walk" (over 750k Soundcloud plays + reaching no.1 on Hype machine), Phaeleh retreated to his hidden Bristol HQ, immersing himself in classic dub-techno and garage; cleansing his palate and returning to his roots. "City Rose" features major folk voice Sam Brooke and is a concrète-hued modern blues number, inspiring day dreams of past El-B drum excursions and excerpts of garage's most emotive era. "Pulse" is strictly dubplate material, digging deep into the roots of dubstep and extracting a relentless techno steppas anthem for the FWD heads. On "So Real" he enlists the haunting Fifi Rong for the daylight sibling of "City Rose," a classical MJ Cole-esque two-step riddim underpins splashes of color and sundown atmosphere. "Alignment" follows with an exquisitely-textured Kubrickian opening scene with sweeping tremolo effects and ominous atmospherics. The one omnipresent factor with all Phaeleh compositions is bass-weight: "Relics" is a hi-tech dubwise slab with lung-collapsing pressure and super-wet percussive details a Bristol-Berlin soundclash. "Neon Melt" sees Phaeleh joined by Chord Marauder's Geode, both injecting the traditional dubstep genome with some smoked-out jazz-broken-beat DNA. On "Ochre" he sates his hungry fanbase with trademarked delicate melodies and guitar work that skips alongside two-step rhythms atop a mountain of low-end. "A World Without" is the perfect end-scene; riffing on the mystery of late '70s sci-horror soundtracks, building with intricate guitar work and strings into a classical Phaeleh epic.
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