- "That more conventional sound is a bigger part of what I'm making nowadays," British producer Elgato conceded in an interview last year. He was referring to "We Dream Electric," the flip-side to the self-released Dunkel Jam, in which the pristine, ultra-restrained sound palette of his Hessle Audio releases was applied to a relatively straightforward four-four framework. We can doubtless expect more hybrid experiments from Elgato in the future (the above quote was followed with the caveat, "it's not where I'm heading exclusively"), but his latest is an even more direct engagement with house.
Links / Sun appears through Galdoors, a young label whose signees include minimal house veteran Audio Werner—a fitting label-mate when you consider Elgato's professed love for mid-'00s Perlon and Cadenza. As such, he doesn't have to adapt much to fit in. The crisp tick-tock percussion, muted chord-samples and tectonic sub-bass rumble of "Links" are all boilerplate Elgato, joined in this case by a few snatches of sampled speech. Our man has achieved powerful alchemical effects with less in the past, but here things don't quite get bubbling; a few tweaks to the chords after the midpoint feel like an attempt at development, but the impression is of a series of disjointed events rather than, as is the case in much of Elgato's work, the culmination of some deeply implacable logic. Fortunately, "Sun" goes a long way towards redeeming things. Its single syrup-thick chord, lapping patiently away at the mix over nine-odd minutes, induces just the sort of slack-jawed hypnosis we'd hoped for.