Crushing debut album from forward UK producer Untold. His 'Black Light Spiral' is an airless, borderline-aggressive assault on the dance borne from nigh on two decades immersed in British rave culture. Since 2008, with releases on his Hemlock imprint, for close chums Hessle Audio, and for Clone and R&S, among others, he's been instrumental in the post-Dubstep field with clinical appropriations of Breakstep, Grime, and most recently, European Techno. He's regularly touted as a producer's producer, a don among the baying, bassbin-dwelling throng, so as you'd imagine his debut album is an eagerly awaited statement for many. Across 8 tracks and 40 minutes he eschews any sense of romantic rave nostalgia in favour of focussing on bludgeoning, masculine dread dystopia. Opening to the cacophony of sirens and distant soundsystem rumble, '5 Wheels' sets the scene before 'Drop It On The One' and 'Sing A Love Song' mangle strafing FM signals with blown-out, roiling ragga techno sound design, and 'Doubles' canters on a dried-out techno groove. 'Wet Wool' follows with more amorphous, impressionistic sound design, whilst 'Strange Dreams' and the aggy charge of 'Hobthrush' rags a jagged, grimacing sort of martial techno akin to recent Perc moves.
