Ecstatic label catch Martin Jenkins (Pye Corner Audio) in Head Technician garb for a slippery set of slow, plasmic acid workouts that were originally issued on a super-limited tape, and now sit heavy on wax. Over the years Jenkins has used the Head Technician alter ego as a sort of evil engineer Hyde analogous to his day-to-day Jekyll, a sort of hyperstitious studio partner in a time-honoured tradition of sleeve credits ghost chasing. Where Pye Corner Audio’s pieces may tend to be lustrous, optimistic, the Head Technician’s Zones LP hems to the shadows of the ‘floor with a furtive, noirish quality that works a treat in the right situations, whether soundtracking gaslamp-lit raves or midnight street patrols seeking out ne’erdowells and laudanum dealers.
Fired on a classic trinity of Roland TR-606 drum machine with an MC-202 (a beast to program, he admits) and TB-303 to sequence his baselines, it clearly makes explicit reference to the early days of Detroit techno and UK bleep ’n bass, but the vibe is more anachronistic, out-of-time, possibly thanks to his patented, lagging basslines and slowly unfolding arrangements, bridging that imaginary, dilated gap between fuzzy dancefloor head melt and curtains-drawn next day gouch out.

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