Scent
Falling Stars
Shattering Teardrops
Ne.er
Splinters
Scales
Crosses
Affliction
Epithet
Liberation - Remix
Vent

The delicate opening pads of 'Scent' give little hint of the intricate patterns of noise that are to follow on "Nexus", an 11-tracker from sound sculptor Radial who hails from the wonderfully-named Bohemia, New York. The CD packaging evokes images of glacial ice sheets, and the music follows suit - gleaming crystalline layers, cold and translucent, sometimes fragile and beautiful and sometimes treacherous and jagged. 'Shattering Teardrops' illustrates this counterpoint both in name and in construction, pitting iridescent droplets of sound against a violent, syncopated rhythm. 'Splinters' comes close to achieving dancefloor-friendliness, but the contrast between its ambient passages and its frenzied, tribalistic percussion segments would surely dissuade all but the most persistent clubbers. On others, 'Epithet' for example and 'Falling Stars', the duality is less pronounced, but the hammerdrill rhythms are disjointed enough to play no functional role beyond perhaps the induction of trancelike states in the listener. It seems our protagonist is aware of this, as 'Liberation - remix' (the original is not provided for comparison) brings things back towards the realms of techno, albeit cold and abstract techno. Lovers of atonal rhythmic experimentation, chilling ambience and percussion for percussion's sake will not be dissapointed here.

ABC