Audiopile Review: Only a handful of releases deep, and Matthew Kent’s Short Span imprint has quickly marked itself as one of the leading sources of dub techno amidst its current renaissance. Returning to Sa Pa, who helped launch the label earlier this year with an EP that’s been well in-demand among discerning bass-heads, and following quickly on the incredible Mammo 2xLP set that’s only a few weeks old and now OOP, the German producer opens up his archives that date back a decade, sounding remarkably fresh considering their slight vintage. If you’ve been following Sa Pa’s work since his early days with Giegling, then you’ve likely heard his crackling atmospheric work expanded with albums on Mana and Astral Industries, his signature attention to detail growing as the years move on. And Ambeesh is not short on the detailing, finding a rickety balance between sub crushing bass explorations and the sloshy ambiance that’s been a through line for him since day one. Riding cavernous signals and glacially toned patterns with big washes of decayed dub echoes and looped static,  Sa Pa reinvigorates the Porter Ricks/Vainquer school of full-submersion techniques, the type of smothering dub techno that’s been touched upon elsewhere recently (usual suspects like the West Mineral/3XL come to mind) but is especially on point across Ambeesh. It’s another absolute stunner from both Short Span and Sa Pa, both on awe-inspiring runs. Limited edition.

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Quickly following March’s The Fool – our label debut – Sa Pa reveals his new album Ambeesh on Short Span.

Coming five years after In A Landscape, and nearly a decade since his debut Fuubutsushi, Ambeesh is a collection of Sa Pa’s unreleased work.

Written between 2014-2019, the album has been conceptually curated as a follow up to his FORUM debut. Ambeesh possesses the unique language and liveliness of ambient, layered field recordings, and dub techno found in those earlier records, with those seamless skydives through pressure formations that were found on the Enter Sa Pa mix.

These pieces have been crackling under the surface of Sa Pa’s released work to date and there’s little else that compares. It’s a cache of some of his deepest and most texturally thrilling music.

Singular in its combination of atmosphere; Ambeesh presses on the body at the right volume, and moves in thrust and riposte with the listener’s circadian rhythms. Sa Pa continues to dissolve the border between club-informed experimentation and intimate headphone listening.

Ambeesh marks the artist’s return to his homeland Australia and an exciting new chapter.