- As Steve Warwick's music has shed some of its globulous synth fat and taken a more recognizably house form, it's been all about tension and contrast—the difficulty of achieving quantization through dusty analogue equipment. Here, on his first release for Dutch house institution Rush Hour, it often sounds like his machines are conspiring against him. The title Convergence hints at a sort of resolution, but really, the warring impulses at the heart of his music have never been stronger. The hi-hats on "Spacescape" feel like they're wading through some invisible muck, with little bits of synth noise flying from the edges like slobber.
On the other hand, something like "Benelux" sounds par for the course, built off an accordion-like synth riff and cheap keys before bursting wide open three minutes in. The track's frenzy of sounds simultaneously repel and congeal. It works in spite of itself but carries the indelible mark of "outsider" house, a curio or artifact rather than a banger. "Convergence" fares better with its low-slung, no-impact drums sounding like they were dubbed off some ancient cassette tape; in the hands of someone else it could be a teasing slowburner, but in Warwick's it's a stationary radiator worthy of his namesake. With familiar house organ sounds, "The Juggler" is the one track where Warwick's equipment works in favour of his mission. The EP's tame but hopeful closer is the most comfortable moment in a record full of contradictions.
Tracklist A1 Borderlands
A2 Spacescape
B1 Convergence
B2 The Juggler