Tete – Rotor EP review

According to online chatter in Innervision’s official forum, the label’s latest offering is a collaboration between Ame and I:Cube. Irrespective of whether this is true or not, one thing can be said with certainty about “Rotor” –  it reaches the same high standards as the rest of Innervision’s back catalogue. The title track is influenced by micro house rather than minimal techno, as tiny, deconstructed beats underpin icy, crystalline melodies. There comes a point, midway through, where the track breaks down and the trancey riffs build back up to the kind of sublime climax last heard on Chadronnet’s “Eve By Day”.

Despite its undoubted ability to cause dancefloor hysteria, “Rotor” plays second fiddle to “Zuckerzeit”. It sounds like the authors have been listening to a lot of classic Efdemin and Pantha Du Prince, but also the raw house of labels like Workshop. No matter what the influences are, the end result is beguiling: evocative, chiming bells are layered over loose, lurching rhythms and glitchy artifacts. The end result is a complex but captivating arrangement that winds and flows its way towards an inevitable but nonetheless irresistible climax. Let’s hope that there are many more collaborations in the offing from Tete.

Richard Brophy