SOHN – Tremors

Having nabbed a 4AD signing off the back of his first EP The Wheel, the now-Vienna-based British (and former Trouble Over Tokyo) producer Toph Taylor – as SOHN – drops his exquisitely produced debut, and the result is a near-flawless, diaphanous LP, as soulful and brooding as it is sleek and measured. Running a policy of tight vocal loops, raindrop percussion, and hypnotic, membranous bass, these eleven tracks mark SOHN as an unflinching virtuoso.

Recorded almost entirely at night, the record is audibly nocturnal; at times sparse and urban (Fool, Veto, and the synthesised motorcade of Lessons), at others misty and moonlit (Tempest, Bloodflows), Tremors is always a dark thing, illuminated only by Taylor’s pained, choral voice. And despite the album’s subatomically precise compositions, that haunting voice gives this spotless robot a human face, conveying real heartache, anguish, and fragility (“Blood, sweat, and tears won’t retrieve it,” he pleads on Lights), no matter how many mechanical textures throb beneath it. [George Sully]