[Clone West Coast Series]

Remember two years ago when Clone ceased to be a label? Thankfully that didn’t really happen, instead just fragmenting into a bunch of smaller, more focused labels. Many of these have been enormously successful, whether it’s the Jack For Daze Series’ take on classicist house, Royal Oak’s focus on modern sounds, or the Basement Series’ look at raw and jacking techno. The West Coast Series, however, focuses on what was Clone’s first iteration’s defining sound — electro. “West Coast” refers to the Netherlands west coast where Clone home-base Rotterdam is located and which takes heavy cues from Detroit and the eternal Drexciya. There has been a lot of renewed interest in these sounds lately, from recent trends in bass music to Drexcyen reissues, but a new transmission from the ancestral home of this stuff carries with it some increased weight. That Night Time Activities Pt.1 is from a new alias of one of techno’s brightest young stars — Conforce — makes expectations even larger.

All that said, Night Time Activities Pt.1 doesn’t disappoint in the slightest: this is simply proper electro done extremely well. “Solenoids of Insomnia” kicks things off with ghastly strings that drift in and out of the space occupied by a menacing bass line and 808 percussion that are the genre’s hallmarks. “Panopticon” is darker, inspiring some of the same panic as that of its namesake prison system, while “Tales of the Unexpected” is a deep journey through 303-shaped landscapes. “Aurora Strain” ends the EP with frantic ticks and moody pads, but seeing as Night Time Activities Pt.1 is the first in a planned triptych to be released in the coming months, it hardly spells the end of Versalife’s electro excursions. Which is a good thing, since I’m already craving more.