Patrick Walker aka Forward Strategy Group returns as User Engine for his second EP for Stepback Records. 01383 EP once again draws heavily on oldskool influences, focusing directly on sounds and rhythms from Chicago and the US with Dance Mania, Robert Armani, Egyptian Lover and DJ Milton directly shaping the sound, feel and jacking nature of the EP.
Patrick Walker of Forward Strategy Group on Soma. Starting off on “Space Wrecks”, it sees Walker drop tough tribal beats and relentless filters. “Outpost” and “Leviathan” go harder, powered by shaking percussion and hammering drums. However, Walker is at his most potent when he plays a more understated hand and closing track “Orbits Decay”, with its loose drums, lulls listeners into a false sense of security before Walker garrotes them with bursts of cheese-wire percussion.
Inner Surface Music present their fourth release with two stalwarts of the UK underground techno scene – Patrick Walker and Inigo Kennedy. ‘Data Distill” kicks off proceedings with tough but grooving rhythms snaking through twisted melodies and textural sound scapes. ‘Parity Function’ starts as it means to go on, the kick drum and groove has a major stomp to it, while spacey bell sequences play with the subterranean dub chords and metallic drones, building tension to the track and locking you in. ‘XOR gate’ is spaced out techno at it’s best, driving dubby drum palettes build with the echoing bell sequences and cinematic strings, transporting you to scenes of a far away place.
Companion EP to Patrick Walker and Smear’s imminent debut album as Forward Strategy Group, featuring two of its heaviest cuts, one exclusive track and a brace of remixes from Factory Floor. ‘Labour Division’ is a low-slung but shark-eyed warehouse number with shades of Luke Slater’s LB Dub Corps project, while ‘Mandate’ explores darker, more minimal territory, with killer snare edits and scruffily dubbed-out chords, and ‘A Greyed Out Life’ is lush synth dreamscaping a la C2, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and even early Human League. Factory Floor’s remix of ‘Nihil Novi’ is an interesting synthesis of post-DFA dub-disco drum patterns, analogue synth spurts and industrial accenting; better still is the version of the same track by the band’s Nik Colk Void, a compelling, skin-crawling work of beatless and bass-heavy electronic abstraction in the spirit of Suum Cuique, Mika Vainio and TG.
The Hipodrome Of Music 