- Stu Robinson is an artist who did his thing in certain dance music corners for an impressive number of years before he took on production. He's long worked as a DJ and promoter around the UK, and started the Scenery label in late 2012, which has since released his own music along with the likes of John Heckle, Bantam Lions and The Cyclist. As ASOK, the Liverpool resident officially got his start making tracks almost two years ago, when the jammy, hardware-centric techno of his Poltergeist EP arrived on M>O>S. And there have been some changes in the meantime: on Count Zero, Robinson's first record for DVS1's Mistress Recordings, the music reflects a looser approach with style and structure. The producer has said himself, "I've tried the plan thing in the past and it never goes to plan, so no plan is the plan. I try to tie things together with technique and vibe rather than making tracks like a jigsaw puzzle." To his credit, that freedom imbues tracks like "Information None" and "Beam" with a sense of relaxed exploration, even as it makes "Count Zero" feel more disjointed.
The EP's best stuff closely resembles "Purple Saturn Day," the ASOK track that appeared on Mistress 5.1 (The Blonde) earlier this year. Those big snares give "Information None"'s heady saunter some welcome bite in its midsection, and "Beam" dons iridescent pads and frantic percussion for a similarly bewitching groove. Robinson slips between deflated and overwrought ideas on the other two. Though ultimately predictable, "Sunrise" is a nice enough trip through the ebb and flow of deep, filtered chords and twitchy house rhythms, so only "Count Zero" could've done with a bit more direction and restraint. What starts as a perfectly OK house motif, with its blown-out beat and cosmic pads, gradually piles on a number of disconnected drum patterns, herky-jerky synth notes and stretched vocal samples. It's all a bit too laissez faire to hit a proper dance floor stride, and winds up sputtering to a close with little ceremony.
TracklistA1 Count Zero
A2 Information None
B1 Beam
B2 Sunrise