Using the alias Tikiman, Dominican-born Paul St. Hilaire began working with Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus in 1995. Oswald and Ernestus at that point were in the middle of a series of experimental releases, labelled Round One to Five, that filtered, phased, and mutated deep, soulful house and garage. 

Together with their output as Basic Channel, especially Phylyps Trak II, these effectively birthed the genre dub techno. As Rhythm & Sound, with St. Hilaire again on the mic, they soon blurred the boundaries between roots reggae and electronica even further. In 2001 St. Hilaire launched his own label, False Tuned, and in 2003 he teamed up with René Löwe to release the seminal single Faith.

Löwe was recording, solo, under the moniker Vainqueur. His first 12, Lyot, was banging big room techno, which was remixed by Basic Channel and appeared on their M (or Maurizio) imprint in 1992. However, four years later he produced a run of releases, like Oswald and Ernestus, that stripped back, radically “reduced” the pummelling and pounding to create, reveal from within it, a simmering, shimmering something else. Solanus (Extracted), for example, is an extended ecstatic, ethereal, ambient pulse. These increasingly sonically exploratory sides where signed to another Basic Channel offshoot, Chain Reaction. There they charted inner space alongside likeminded folk such as Torsten Pröfrock, Monolake, Porter Ricks, Substance, Shinichi Atobe, and Vladislav Delay. Some wag, somewhere in the press labelled this music “Heroin House”.

Faith has now been reissued by Kynant Records, on their ambient arm, Kynant EX, allowing its washes, waves of dub techno vapour to be reassessed. Its sub-bass skanking, super subliminal, deep beneath a sea of diffuse, diffracted detail and St. Hilaire’s sweet vocal hook:

“Let your light flow, got to let your love show.”

A stoned drift, certainly, it summons a sensation somewhere between sleeping and waking. As an “ambient” BGM it gradually seeps in and saturates your consciousness. A mood massaging music, that brainwashes you with its blissed-out, positive vibes. The aural equivalent of a hit on a big sensi spliff. While the static might sound like sheets of showering rain, wrapping you in its wonderful, woozy, warmth, whether the sun’s out or not.

René Löwe & Paul St Hilaire’s Faith is out again on Kynant Records.