Audiopile Review: Balmat Records, who, at this point, need little introduction to our regular readers, follow up last year’s bounty of six full lengths by kicking off 2025 with the second album from DOVS, the cross-continental collab between Johannes Auvinen (best known as acid techno expert Tin Man), and Mexico City’s Gabo Barranco (aka AAAA). The duo’s first release, 2019’s Silent Cities, issued on Berlin imprint Acid Test, was a direct dose of speaker-testing acid techno, albeit one with a soft touch that rounded the edges of a sub genre that can lean towards abrasiveness. DOVS expand on that soft touch, slowing things to a crawl with Psychic Geography and favouring the type of astral excursions we’ve come to expect from Balmat. Dropping the drums completely, the duo unfurl their old school hardware and analog gear for a slow-mo escapade that pulls on that oh-so-pullable thread that connects ‘70s synth-kraut with the ‘90s chill-out aesthetic, leaning heavily on the infamous sound of the 303 to help retain their acid tendencies. Sure, this is gonna be an overt nod to nostalgia for some of you, but DOVS have a good handle on melody and resplendent world-building, enough to melt even the most hardened heard-it-all-before armchair critics. Recommended for fans MPU101’s smeared ambience and the dreamier side of Om Unit’s Acid Dub Studies. Another critical addition to the Balmat catalog.

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DOVS are the duo of Vienna’s Johannes Auvinen, aka Tin Man, and Mexico City’s Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA. Psychic Geography is their second album together, but it differs considerably from both their respective solo work and their 2019 debut LP together, Silent Cities: Where that album’s hardware-based acid kept its gaze focused squarely on the dancefloor, Psychic Geography is a strictly ambient affair.

The album has its roots in a trio of beatless tracks that peppered Silent Cities; this time, the duo decided to try making an entire album with no drums. “It opened up the chance to make a different, more narrative style of music with more complex structures,” Auvinen says. Ambiguity and uncertainty are key watchwords for their music, which moves with eerie, liquid grace. Untethered from 4/4 kicks, their music drifts and morphs; familiar acid sequences give way to surprising shifts in tone and mood. And with no drums to distract the ear, the seeming simplicity of their silvery synth lines opens up to reveal remarkable depth and dynamism.

Barranco and Auvinen recorded the album together in the studio utilizing machines like the Roland TB-303, Juno G, Prophet 5, Elektron Octatrack MKII, Make Noise DPO and René, Mutable Clouds, Roland SH-101, Behringer TD3, and Sherman Filterbank. Listen on good speakers or headphones, and you can tell: Their gear yields a tonal richness that recalls the ambient and cosmic music of decades earlier. You can practically feel the heat from their circuits warming the air.

The meaning behind the name DOVS is as ambiguous as the duo’s music. (Dig, if you will, the picture of Picasso’s dove of peace—or, perhaps, the outline of a bird pressed into a small white pill.) But Psychic Geography needs little explanation. DOVS’ album is a collection of mental maps of imaginary places. Set your coordinates for the mirage on the horizon and prepare to dissolve.