Sensate Focus goes experimental footwork on 1.66666

Listen to the surprisingly footwork-leaning sounds of Mark Fell’s next Sensate Focus release.

Originally debuting early last year on an eponymously named sub-label of Editions Mego, Mark Fell’s Sensate Focus project was started as a way of exploring and recomposing ’90s house music with a rotating cast of fellow producers. Limiting himself to a small number of soft synths and samples, the results are simultaneously clinical and enveloping, with results that combine strobing kickdrums with irregular percussion and warm, sensuous chords.

Fell’s next subdivision of the original Sensate Focus integer (the first release was number 10 and has been split into increasingly smaller numbers since) is 1.66666, and sees Fell and Sasu Ripatti take the Sensate Focus project into unexpected musical territory; unlike the more obvious house influence of previous records, the “Y” side of 1.66666 seems more indebted to the stuttering rhythms and madly  cut-up vocals of footwork, getting progressively more frantic as the vocals are pitched to breaking point.