Audiopile Review: Huerco S’ West Mineral imprint moves beyond the usual rotating cast of producers for their second emission of the year, this newest one courtesy of producer Sleepdial. Though a new name to us, the Denver-based musician has been accruing some stats over the past decade-plus through various projects, including sporadic releases under this alias that date back as far as 2013. Despite the unfamiliarity, we know we’re in good hands with West Mineral, the label doing now for Sleepdial what they’ve already done for acts like Mister Water Wet, Exael, uon and Serwed—ie. elevating them to the forefront of underground electronic music. And Sleepdial is just as impressive as his label mates, his splicing of dub techno, glitch and ambient overtones slots into the West Mineral motif with ease. Like his contemporaries, Sleepdial is indebted to the blueprint set by Sasu Ripatti and the bubbling abyss he explored as Vladislav Delay, Jan Jelinek’s spectacular mid-00s run on ~scape and even Pole’s dense creations of recent years can be heard poking through. Undulating rhythms slither through a churning ambiance that’s perforated with glassy tones, glitched FX and held together with a deliriously disorienting dubby web. Totally impressive stuff and surely one of the better releases on the label in recent years. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait too long for another offering. Edition of 300.

The hypnagogic haze of purling, refractive dub is strong on Sleepdial’s debut for Huerco S’ West Mineral, introducing a crafty new name to the scene after a teasing preview on that Peak Oil x NWAQ radio show, delivering a heavy-lidded dose of tattered ambient dub inversions in a mode shared with Huerco S., Vialan, False Aralia, early Pole, Vladislav Delay.

Sleepdial chases a frayed thread of thought thru the fractal echo chambers of ‘RV Lights’, only their 2nd full-length under this alias, and first on vinyl. The 9-part album is optimised for getting smudged on sunny daze with its pursuit of elusive dub sprites that connote subaquatic or vaporous etheric themes in their elemental diffusions and world-building ecologies.

In equilibrium of ambient and dub-as-method, they tenderly tease the senses with a fine grasp of deferred gratification, oscillating abstract spatial navigations and ephemeral moments of heart-in-mouth euphoria. Where sometimes this stuff can err to a pleasant mess, the dub ballast here anchors proceedings in a rugged groove that really pushes the right buttons and elevates the whole thing in its own air.

Blessed with a compelling sensuality, tracks follow a course from the compressed contrails of ‘Purview’ to the helical shapes of ‘Dovetailing’ and thru beautifully pill-bellied sensations on ‘Icarus Rising’, into ruggeder, insectoid dub in ‘Blue August’ to short circuit agitated and soothing feels. That fractured sort of duality manifests at its most anxious yet enchanted in the unpicked strings and astral scree of ‘Lightplay’, and in the title and feel of ‘Lean Angst’, gently keeping heads on toes into the swirling pressure system of album sign-off ‘Airtank’.