Following the epic Balearic pop of Our Time, Artificial System have returned to their experimental electronics. The new E.P., Chemical Techniques, is more in keeping with the earlier Living In Timeless Space, which the outfit described as “inter dimensional excursions.”

Like that set, this outing emerges from soundscapes of shimmering drone, industrial rattle, SFX, and collaged spoken samples. Synthesising Sci-Fi scores for darker dancefloors. Funky, and fiercely alternative. The opening Field Generator is beatless, ambient, but unsettling. Is “Illbient” still a thing? Its repurposed scientific chatter concerned with warping time, and alien electromagnetic entities glimpsed in the space between the parallel worlds created.  Backwards boasts slo-mo, but heavy, bruising beats, and a boisterous bass synth. Its keys like a rave riff reprised, but stoned. An alluded, Quaalude-d, take on Landlord’s I Like it.

Dating On K drops you down a hole, where you’re surrounded by a party of shrieking, shouting, but mainly giggling Japanese girls. Short bursts of bleeps and robotic rhythm sometimes shake this disorientating psychedelic swirl, while another “found” voice describes astral projection voyages. She’s Got Snake Eyes then sends that rhythm on a more uptempo spin. Beefing up the snares and the kick, while weaving in waves of 6-string treatments, and a searing, almost bagpipe-like, solo. Paying homage to a 1990s progressive house sound that’s recently become all the go. Again. The sinister whispers here seem centred on the Ouroboros, “the serpent without end”. The ancient circular symbol adopted by Gnosticism, Hermeticism and alchemy, that signifies the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Invoking a universal, eternal, feedback loop. Something that Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw as power, personal “growth”, derived from the assimilation of the subconscious and shadows. The process by which all intelligent life, organic or artificial, learns, and evolves, via challenge, mistake and experience.

Artificial System’s Chemical Techniques is out now, via Bandcamp.