Cithare by Atonal

For those who showed love for our E.M.U. compilation, here is another lost piece of British techno history. We’ve unearthed more Metatone affiliated material from the formative years. The EP is, for the most part, unreleased and unheard music circa 1994 by Edinburgh’s Kieran Warren aka Atonal. We wanted to honour the 27-year gap in output by headlining the release with the only previously released track, “Cithare”, which featured on a Metatone Recordings compilation as a teaser of what was to be his solo release. As you know, the label went under but fortunately a lot of the material Kieran produced survived on archived DAT tapes.

As for the music, for us the title track conjures up the melodic patterns of Selected Ambient Works married with the rawness of Universal Indicator. The rest of the EP takes a more broken beat approach. “Malago” and “Cluster” send us floating into dimensional space with ethereal pads harnessed with rolling breaks. As if almost an antithesis of its title, “Northern Soul” takes us to a more sinister direction which sounds like Mike Paradinas after a particularly rough ragga evening. The EP closes with a heartwarming vignette that is “Saw Her Yesterday”, which could be a clue of things to come as we’re already working on an Atonal 2LP for 2020!