New Yorker Alien D has a 5-track EP out on Sydney label, Theory Therapy. Each number puts a modern spin on `90s “ambient techno” chillout room gear. 

The opening The Artist’s Prayer combines abstract, echoed percussion and swells that summon 10cc’s I’m Not In Love. The titular prayer is recited in ecstatic whispers, washed with heavy reverb. 

Breather begins as a delicate, deep dub techno drift, but midway through starts shaking to a big bass heartbeat. As if waking up and heading, stomping, slowly toward a dance floor. Taking giant, seismic footsteps. Gradually becoming more forceful in its conviction, and desire to convince you, in its, your, need to move. Nod your head. Sway from side to side. Guest guitar from Ben Seretan sends out peaceful, beautiful, bent, pedal steel-like notes throughout the track’s 13 epic minutes inner space dive.*  

Soil Dub shuffles, shapeshifting down an obsidian cavern of phased, filtered percussion and monastic echoes. Powered by a powerful, pulsating LFO. 

Sleepy’s Gambit is a perkier rhythmic ritual. Subtle, spirit lifting synth touches mixing with tonked tones, transformed to sound like tablas, and a breakdown of tiny, temple bells. The mood like the sun’s just come up / out. 

The closing, cool, conga-ed Allusion is a blissful, bucolic, analogue bubblebath, whose massaging beats swim in synthetic shimmer and sampled surf, while a guru / guide has you focus on your breathing. 

Alien D’s For The Early Hours Of A World In Bloom can be ordered directly from Theory Therapy.

*A bit like BJ Cole jamming with Quiet Village remixing Mudd’s Spielplatz.