Back in 2000, “Summer” was Glaswegian artist Pub’s sophomore single. Released on London label Vertical Form, he joined a roster that included innovative electronica names such as Arovane, Corker / Conboy and Pan*American. A 16-minute mixing desk meditation, the track was a diaphanous cloud of treated clicking and clacking. Its bottom-end booming like a mother’s heartbeat, heard from within the womb. A warm, relaxing, reassuring drift, deeply textured with lightly dancing details and diffuse shape-shifting melodies. Its ambience evolving, a little Orb-like, through flickering fractal frequencies, rising and falling, constantly changing, retaining the listener’s attention. The mix containing, maybe, the suggestions at least, of multiple, muted, manipulated field recordings. The results, molten, liquid. Honey-ed. 

Quickly gaining the status of a downtempo, dub techno classic, “Summer” was subsequently sought-after, and bootlegged 9 years later. The demand, however, never went away, and Pub put the tune back out on his own label Ampoule in 2020, and again in 2021. A third repress is now up for pre-order in select discerning stores. The Ampoule version flipped by the urgent, introspective IDM of “Fragile Root”. This symphony of twisted metallic tones riding shuffling, stuttering cymbals, racing, rattling, rocketing, shooting through showers of laser blasts. The first half with the feel of a hymn from the future. The second hitting a bit jazzier and, eventually, just like “Summer”, subjected to psychedelic, Sci-Fi swirls of delay. 

12” copies of Pub’s “Summer / Fragile Root” can be preordered from discerning dealers, such as Dubwise Vinyl. The digital can be purchased directly from Ampoule.