[Third Ear Recordings]

A lot of modern dub techno practitioners, especially during this recent popularity boom, tend to rely too heavily on the play books written by the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction family and not enough on their own ingenuity. South African ex-pat and long-time NYC resident has never seemed too bound to that template as suggested by his work as Beat Pharmacy, Echologist and more recently under his own name. Last year he turned a number of heads with the “Jazz Space EP” on Third Ear Recordings, a gritty four tracker with dirt under its dubby fingernails and a sparse allotment of tone color, wringing the melodic pleasure out of every last distorted note.

“One Man’s Junk…” is the second of three Third Ear EPs which constitute an album later this year. Here he’s a little less frugal with melody, offering up another four tracks which are conceptually lucid and stunningly colorful, perhaps more so than in any of his previous self titled work. The bounding bass patterns and tightly looped guitar plucks of “N-Train,” a cool and collected deep house mover, lead the pack and suck in unexpectedly interested listeners. The title cut dives into a friction-friendly mess of house rhythms and rasping textures; don’t be surprised if you come out the other end with smoother skin. Moeller hints at an underground river of melody beneath noise stretched and warped beyond recognition on “Changes.” He even dares to get jazzy on closer “Stinkin’ Thinkin’,” dappled with placid piano plinks, upright bass runs and a harmonica’s swoon reverberating breathlessly across its nine minutes. Moeller proves simply unafraid to experiment.

Brendon Moeller’s Third Ear EPs have solidified in my mind that he’s one of the most interesting producers working in the dub techno/house paradigm today. “One Man’s Junk” is a must buy record for those who enjoy hearing the building blocks of the genre shaken up before being loosed on the dance floor.