[Trust]

Under the Urban Tribe moniker, Detroit’s Sherard Ingram quickly built a following for his quality down-tempo fare with help from labels like Mo Wax and collaborators such as Kenny Dixon Jr., Carl Craig, and Anthony Shakir. Since then, and under a variety of guises, he’s increasingly trended toward sped-up, acid-inflected electro and, in the process, conspicuously added James Stinson to the above list. “Social Engineering” is one of the more feverish entries in Ingram’s catalog, and surely one of the best.

Stunning opener “Her” begins with glitchy plinks, a breathless low end, and a snippet of sensual diva vocals, hinting at both 90’s IDM and jungle. The track utterly swells, though, with the onset of ecstatic, palpitating quivers of synthesizer. These blissful repetitions are the track’s most salient feature, their shifts from strobing sensory overload to smooth melodic undulation giving “Her” an enlivened restlessness that’s simply gripping. Extending the high, “Gencon”‘s euphoric electro is at least as huge. This one boasts an even more anxious bass line, which is generously complemented by streaked treatments of the smacking percussion. The rhythm’s Drexciyan connection slaps you in the face but, once again, the synths elevate this to something fresh and special, their squiggly, high-pitched melodies darting about — larval beginnings perhaps of further, ongoing mutations to the hydro funk reverently referenced.

Over on the B, Ingram maintains the pace, but the mood’s darkened considerably. An array of zombie movie audio grabs lend “Shambling Masses” some campy narrative, injecting the atmosphere with hysteria (“I can feel myself ROT!”) and paranoia (an extended exposition linking Dow Chemical, the Army, and the war on drugs to the reanimation of the dead). Ingram scatters these over a punchy frame that cements the earlier jungle link, deploying ominous piano samples to enhance the sense of dread. Less heavy-handed, and without the reliance on samples, the brisk “Sabotage Clique” is a different take on the apocalyptic. There are twinkling flourishes of treble like those heard on the A-side, but here they’re intermittent, and mysteriously unstable, allowing the spooky low end to drag the track into the abyss. A package of any two of these tracks would be worth charting, but a consistent four-tracker with peaks as high as “Her” and “Gencon,” well, that’s a generous treat indeed.