Ian Martin returns with a new 4-track EP called Rites Of Passage out on Enfant Terrible/Gooiland Elektro. The Rotterdam-based DJ/producer has hosted his SEER show on Intergalactic FM since 2009, the same year he debuted with his Shadow Walker LP on Bunker Records. With an extensive output over the years via labels like Panzerkreuz Records, New York Haunted, and Shimmering Moods, to name a few, Ian Martin has explored blitzed out realms of psychedelic ambience, while SEER has continued his “kaleidoscopic” sonic vision with selections that explore “experimental music in its broadest form.” On Rites of Passage, however, Martin exchanges cosmic drift for an equally atmospheric but beat-driven strategy and the results are gripping and cinematographic.
“Mood Of Uncertainty“, the EP’s third track, unfolds like a noir crime thriller riding an aural edge of tension even as it becomes an increasingly harrowing task. Built around a regimented drum pattern that seems to serve as a stern reminder of time’s narrowing constraints, one can almost imagine this cut’s protagonist racing against slim odds. Maybe a mysterious heiress has gone missing, or some rich guy’s daughter has disappeared. Meanwhile, our hero searches an urban maze thru thickets of industrial fog as icy rain falls. Martin is a master of this kind of dark atmosphere, and on Rites of Passage, he spins this ability to filmic ends eschewing ambient drift for a rich sense of dramatic narrative.
