[Jealous God]

Juan Mendez has been steadily honing his production chops for well over a decade now. His preliminary releases as Jasper often hinted at greatness, but as Silent Servant he’s consistently supplied some of the strongest techno of the past five years, both on his own and as part of the nebulous Sandwell District collective. With his new Jealous God label it seems like Mendez is ready to take his well-established sound and step outside of it: dissolving it, reshaping it, and bringing it into new territories. Earlier this year, Jealous God’s first release, a collaboration between Mendez and Svreca, distilled his bass lines and tape-saturated atmospheres into minimalist shapes that hypnotized through subtle prodding.

“Lust Abandon” goes elsewhere, this time picking up where his excellent Negative Fascinations album from last year left off. Through that record and his recent DJ sets Mendez has made his interest and love for 80s post-punk and EBM explicit, and “Lust Abandon,” with its steady 115 BPM tempo and gloomy atmosphere, all but caps it off. A constantly shifting arpeggio functions as the track’s backbone, guiding us through Mendez’s reduced environment of minor-key pads and heavily processed voices. The track’s sense of focus and confidence mirrors that of Silent Servant’s best work — its steely, plodding thud never blinks and never abates, seemingly building ad infinitum. Powell does his thing on the B-side, pushing “Lust Abandon” even further down the path of no-wave rhythms and post-punk attitudes, but while it’s an interesting enough listen it mostly serves to highlight just how good the A-side is.