It`s not sequenced that way, but Guy Contact`s debut long-player, Drinking From The Mirage, can be kinda divided into two distinct musical halves. On the one hand you have the uptempo gear – the percolating, pumping, flickering, fractal, delirious dancers, like the opening opus, 90 Mile Straight (Nullarbor Mix), or Body Groove, a clapping and rattling ecstatic express train. Earth Hydrosphere is a bit of blue-skied bleep. The title track – featuring the vocals of fellow Perth-based artist, NORI, submerged in subaquatic sine waves – is a poppier moment, that had me flashing back to 1991 / 92, recalling the perfect propulsive motion of chart-topping crossovers, Sunscreem. All share these sort of skipping snare patterns. 

On the other hand you’ve the downtempo tackle, and I guess it goes without saying that it`s these slower sounds that are the winners for me. Stuff like Feel the Feeling – gorgeous, with a gated loose guitar strum, sighing synthesized ambience, which gives way to a rolling IDM rhythm. Weaving whistling woodland wildlife into its LFO hum, it could have quite easily have been lifted from Music From Memory’s Virtual Dreams comp. Spirit Level is similar, its stoned, spaced-out, serenity, its new age nuances, shaken by a big fuck-off break. Pitched down jungle in its chopped-up chops.

I’ve been reading Kris Needs` biography of The Orb`s Alex Paterson – Babble On An Ting – and I’ve been wondering if anybody would ever had made music like this, if it hadn’t been for The Orb. Welcome to Sporties, for example, borrows from reggae and dub in exactly the same way as Paterson, Jimmy Cauty, Andy Falconer, Youth, and Kris “Thrash” Weston, et. al., once did. It`s a direct decedent of their “ambient house for the e generation”*, buzzing with a Deeelite / What Is Love? -esque TR-909 b-line. High, buoyantly bubbling, and just a little acidic. Voices From The Bedrock is even more Orb-like, a ringer for Sun Electric`s O`locco. A perfect entry / re-entry spin for fans of Love Saves the Day. Busy with detail – subliminal squiggles and spoken word samples – for boogie-ing bods off their nut. 

Guy Contact`s Drinking From The Mirage is released this Friday, October 15th, by Butter Sessions. The package includes two bonus digi tracks – the 303 ambience of The Outback Starts Here, and the pianotastic Pyramid Scheme. 

 Notes
*For another fine, expertly executed, Antipodean example of this, do check OK EG.