Audiopile Review: Keplar is doing a phenomenal job of getting glitch classics from the late CD era into print on vinyl. Recently, we’ve had albums from Tujiko Noriko, Frank Bretschneider, Vladislav Delay, and so, and so on. If all this label had done was get Ekkehard Ehlers’ ‘Plays’ back into print, it would be a legend. One odd result of Keplar’s legendary work is that it has made us realize a lot of the music from this era was surprisingly accessible. For every bit of glitched-out chaos, there’s a moment of ambient bliss or a dubby, downtempo beat. Keplar’s reissues of albums by Dan Abrams, aka Shuttle358, are a great example of this. Those who have been enjoying represses from the likes of Jan Jelinek and Dettinger will instantly adore Abrams’ slow-motion dub techno. Having said that, ‘Optimal.LP’, the latest Shuttle358 album on Keplar’s release schedule, is rather dark as these things go. Its inky, textured drones will appeal to Loscil fans. And who isn’t a Loscil fan? So, while it might be a bit more mean-and-moody than you might expect, ‘Optimal.LP’ is another glitch-dub slam dunk.

Released in 1999 on Taylor Deupree’s 12k label, optimal.lp was the debut album by Dan Abrams under his Shuttle358 moniker. For its 25th anniversary, Keplar presents it on vinyl for the first time with three previously unreleased tracks, as well as a new artwork recreated by Daniel Castrejón and a remaster by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich based on the original pre-masters that were been restored and cleaned up for the reissue project by Abrams. optimal.lp was inspired by the rich tradition of ambient music and the rhythmic complexity of 1990s electronica while also sharing many traits with the then-emerging clicks’n’cuts movement, making it a true sui generis piece of work — both informed by tradition and visionary, idiosyncratic and seminal for many artists after him. During the 1990s, Abrams increasingly immersed himself in the electronica scene and the output of labels such as Instinct, where Deupree worked as an art director and released his first records as Human Mesh Dance. Abrams found a home on 12k after sending Deupree a demo tape that would later evolve into optimal.lp, released as the label’s fifth catalogue number. This sense of timelessness remains tangible after a quarter of a century after the album’s original CD release and is even being expanded upon by the vinyl reissue, which is complemented by three pieces that were made while Abrams was working on the album. The digital release even features an entirely new take on the original album’s final piece, “Tank.” While Abrams let one of the masters go through his customized reverb unit when preparing the reissue, he started recording the results of this accidental dialogue between past and present. It’s a fitting tribute to an album whose delicate circular rhythms, rich textures, and ethereal melodies are precisely so exhilarating because their interplay seems to suspend the passing of time altogether.