Mr Beatnick Keeps the Samples Light

Terra Arcana arrives on Tartelet, built from a deep sample palette and moving between downbeat material and tracks that lean towards techno while staying unusually light on their feet. Sample-based production is as old as this music, and the common failure is density. Crates full of material plus unlimited track count equals records where everything is happening at once and nothing has room to be heard. Doing it with air is harder and far less common: it requires leaving things out that were perfectly good, which is a discipline rather than a technique. Tartelet has released consistently in this register, music that is melodic and unhurried without being decorative, functional without being blunt. It is a catalogue built for the parts of a night that most labels ignore in favour of the peak. That is where this belongs: early in an evening, or early in a day. A warm-up record in the proper sense, which sets the temperature of a room without demanding anything from it. There are not many of those, and they are worth more than their reputation suggests.

Label: Tartelet.