Adrian Corker and Paul Conboy released the post-rock long-player, The Light That Learnt Later, in 2003. A decade before, as the Plastic Dance Band, they’d produced a downtempo Andrew Weatherall favourite in the shape of the New Order sampling track, Talking Drum… and then moonlighted as trip hoppers A.P.E. (the tune Snakes Pass was / is a standout).*

Corker / Conboy are now reissuing the album digitally and accompanying that with a trilogy of remix 12s. The first of these, on one side, features the original, In The Dust And The Haze. A slow, sleepy, dreamy drift of country / folk-ified guitars and harmonium-like drones, its a horizontal slice of baked Americana. An acoustic, picked pastoral with sly, subtle electronics, and the odd funky backwards bit, that sits, stoned, alongside Califone’s Quicksand/Cradlesnakes and early Tortoise.

On the flip you’ll find 3-piece, Purelink – Ben Paulson, Akeem Asani, and Tom Pasalski – an acclaimed Chicago-based outfit whose now highly sought after self-titled debut appeared on Greek indie UwU Dust Bath in 2020. They followed that last year with the equally sublime Signs on L.A.’s Peak Oil.

With a beatless rhythm like a splashing, lapping tide their track, which samples elements from the entire Corker/Conboy album, is a densely detailed, diffracted dub. Similar in tone to the fabulous “folktronica” of Other Lands’ Matter (Reshaped) which was a personal “ambient” highlight of 2022, it’s a serene symphony of near subliminal swells and sustain. Another reference point would be Pub’s seminal Summer.

Corker Conboy X Purelink is out now on Bad Info.

*Signed to London label Dorado, A&R hero, Ross Allen (now of Foundation Music), penned some barmy press release about them being discovered busking outside a US music conference. We need more fabricated imaginative backstories – copy is far too serious these days.