34 by A Taut Line

Hot on the heels of the sweltering split single from BD1982, Diskotopia continue their stride into the 2016 sultry season with a 4-track EP from Diskotopia founder and label co-conspirator A Taut Line. 34 is a succinct and poignant aperçu of Matt Lyne’s provocative trajectory under the A Taut Line moniker, a stark as ever contrast to his work as Greeen Linez, but also featuring some of his most club-focused material to date. As with his past two solo LPs, Nitriding Portrait and Mutual Prints, A Taut Line has static yet complementary influences working in harmony to forge unique "dance music" juxtapositions.
Traces of rave and jungle’s fractured past coalesce with freestyle and Belgian beat moods on EP opener Burleigh St. As sun-stroked breakbeats buckle and deflect around stratospheric synth pads, hollow kick drums navigate a chopped and quantized Long Island MC lost-in-time through Moroccan flutes and heavy dancehall pressures.

Whilst revisiting the distorted-memory-of-mid-90s-handbag-anthems theme as heard on his 2011 track Luna 99, with Timeplaza A Taut Line delves a little deeper and heads into a subterranean abyss awash with chugging rhythms, dub-splashed chords, an acidic funked-out lead and strings that would leave a tear in LTJ Bukem’s eye. Pre-Millennium sci-fi crime vibes meet a Friday night out in the International Space Station rec room during a solar storm.

The UK funky after too much syrup and high-grade spliff vibes of SJK Legal works as a perfect auditory cocktail for hazy summer days. Recreating the experience of a humid August crawl through the streets of Shinjuku, with the relentless mélange of sounds imposing from all directions. Multifarious video screen audio, matsuri percussion and kawaii bell motifs captured from inter-dimensional FM frequencies percolate over a bassline cut straight from the cloth of the ever mutating hardcore continuum.

Deep but jagged house-not-house built for the late-night crew of millennials more inclined to construct neo-Mayan sundials than search the deep web for quasi-legal pharmaceutical remedies, The Rouge is a vow to the romance instilled into years of music built for the evening explorers of the world. Heaving and precise, the ghosts of 1993 come back in a vapor amidst the wails of a siren caught between memories of exasperation and ecstasy.

A Taut Line is the primary moniker for Bristol-born, Tokyo-based artist Matt Lyne. He runs the Diskotopia label with BD1982 and is one half of Greeen Linez, a collaboration with Cambridge-based long-term musical partner Christopher Greenberg. He also releases under several anonymous pseudonyms.