[Millions of Moments]

Like any self-respecting trainspotter worth their salt, when I come across a producer whose music moves me, I need to find out more about them. Learning that San Francisco native Bvdub has been producing music for less than two years came as a huge shock, but deeper digging revealed a musical pundit versed in over 15 years of knowledge and experience through DJing. It would be somewhat churlish to cast the tag of dub techno on his productions. Yes, there is an undeniable tendency towards those textures and chords and yes he counts Quantec among his kindred producers. However, there is something about his compositions compelling deeper contemplation surpassing any easy label or categorization. Perhaps it has something to do with his true love being ambient music or maybe it’s his trying to forge the deepest communications possible through his sculpted sounds that arouses such cogitation.

His latest excursion is a double whammy on Styrax’s sister label Millions of Moments, releasing “Wish I Was Here” and “Where To Now” at the same time, though we’ll stick to the former for now. The title track begins with a low thrum of feeling trying to rise above the static crackle of a voice lost in a radio or TV transmission. A soft kick appears, chords fall and are swept away by an undercurrent, the whole feeling so ethereal you’ll scarcely notice the nearly 12 minutes duration of the track pass by. At the peak of “Wish I Was Here” a spare bass line fires off three short stabs every two bars and the lost voices return to babble their incoherent incantations amidst a lonely hi-hat snapping off hits.

“Vermillion” is even more dream-like; long beat-less tendrils of emotive bliss gradually adopting 4/4 structures, breaking them back down again to atmospherics and repeating the process. Some of the pads carry with them a vibration that sounds like millions of insect wings fluttering no slower than those of a hummingbird, others carry the whisper of human voice. Listening to this 12″ feels like an audible postcard from space, slowly watching the sun rise over the curling edges of Earth, bathing it in light. Simply stunning.