Raime / Regis - If Anywhere Was Here He Would Know Where We Are / This Foundry

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Brian on Thu 02 Dec, 2010.

Not quite got to grips with Raime's stuff yet. I can tell it's an impressive blend of desolate ambient moods & highly moody stripped-to-the-bone techno elements which should have me salivating to be honest. The production quality is full, atmospheric & rather eerie. I think a whole album of their work will make much more sense. This is the kind of music I like to be spun as a part of a long journey. This main piece finishes before I've got time to truly process my feelings. On the other hand, the Regis remix on the flip is a wonderful slab of dystopian dub techno that recalls Monolake locked in a slimy, dripping cave where monsters & ghosts dwell in the pitch-black crevices but somehow you find yourself truly excited, even elated as you see the approach of a distant light & then.......this awesome glacial synth line comes to play amongst the deep bass pulses and itchy beats. This is a true masterpiece from Regis and I must admit I feel inclined to bag this baby, if only to try & make true sense of the A side.

Blackest Ever Black returns with a second poised, powerful offering from Raime, accompanied by a remix from Regis (Downwards/Sandwell District).

'If anywhere was here he would know where we are' is a tense, almost guarded work, with a rolling, starkly foregrounded rhythm that might make one think of jungle, if jungle were a product of the 80s cold wave. The drum hits and synth tones seem almost punitive, designed to admonish rather than seduce - and yet seduce they do. Raime use richly detailed, dread-infused sound design - and, once again, an array of deeply embedded industrial and gothic samples - to survey feelings of loss, listlessness and anxiety as only they know how.

On the flip, Regis reinvents 'This Foundry', a track taken from Raime's recent (sold-out) debut EP. It's a tough but remarkably sensitive version, true to the original's overriding atmosphere of decay and disquiet, but also tapping into its romantic undercurrents. Things begin in tense, predatory techno mode: industrial shrapnel wheeling around a commanding, gutter-savvy bassline and reinforced steppers' rhythm. This cyclical dancefloor attack builds in intensity, eventually giving way to a redemptive, widescreen climax, all the suppressed longing of Raime's original loosed in a momentary glimpse of the sublime.