I’m not sure how many folks can stretch to a vinyl box set these days, but Pye Corner Audio’s Where Things Are Hollow: No Tomorrow is an impressive body of work. Building on two EPs, released in 2017 and 2020, and taking those 8 tracks out to 13 – plus adding 5 remixes – it reminded me of that Virgo 4 retrospective, Resurrection. There’s a lot to listen to, especially in one hit, but there are some real gems. In fact, none of it is “filler”. After just the first 2 tracks it’s clear that PCA and his machines are making the music that they want to make – regardless of vogue or fashion. Plugging in, switching on, and like old friends, tuning in, and simply enjoying jamming together.

The originals are sequenced so that they alternate between raw, pumping analogue house and beatless synthscapes. The former are cavernous creations, carved by thumping kicks, echoed handclaps, and heavy on the high hats. Cuts constructed with a deft, well practised, dancefloor dynamic. Each effortlessly generating a beast of a groove. Starting stripped and minimal, but expanding out into rave ready / friendly emotive epics, introducing spirit-lifting keys and trippy, trance-y tones. Dancing, darting gated sequences. Arcs of sonic shimmering. Swirling swells. Producing, inducing, positivity via rapid, racing patterns of ping ponging bleeps.

The B-lines all call back to 80s Chicago jack. Big on room-shaking hum and seismic  boom. Detroit gets a look in too, on tunes like Northern Safety Route – which recalls Retroactive-era Carl Craig getting contemplative / Sitting Under A Tree – and After Effects, which is more “time, space, transmat.” The later tracks also drop acid.

The “ambient” pieces are far from interludes. Shaped from drones, dark strings and introspective melodies, they shift in influence from techno to kosmische and classic Sci-Fi scores. One standout is the soft focus, romantic Simulation Cult. Remixed by Alessandro Cortini this travels to somewhere far darker. Glitched, growling, but if anything, more symphonic. Lord Of The Isles adds a breakbeat and a rocking old school electro twist to Self Synchronise. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith renders Mainframe much more organic, with river-like ripples and warm squeezebox wheezes. Surgeons Girl gets hypnotic. Her altered (state) take on After Effects mixes rushing computerised counterpoint and fluid frequencies, which gradually gets increasingly intense and frenetic. John Talabot’s rework of Resist presents a crazy percussive pounding. Beginning like Liquid Liquid before morphing into a wriggling, writhing TB-303 touting prog-house monster. Something more like Factory Floor.

Pye Corner Audio’s Where Things Are Hollow: No Tomorrow can be ordered directly from Laspus Records.