IVVY is getting set to release their upcoming 12″ Safe Within via Medical Records‘ techno imprint Transfusions on September 29th. Since 2016, the Seattle-based producer has put out cassettes on Motor and Jungle Gym Records, and their recent Surface Tension podcast, recorded earlier this summer, features IVVY’s increasingly dark and minimal take on techno. Safe Within continues that precedent with four stripped back tracks of mysterious ambiance and propulsive, floor-oriented rhythm.
IVVY’s roiling atmospheres provide a claustrophobic tension throughout Safe Within, and while they suggest dark interiors their spell-binding quality tends to conjure the inner realms of being rather than outside urban or industrial space. Providing a psychic focus for each track, these atmospheres slowly manipulate thru time in subtle, almost imperceptible ways, and this lends more of an organic quality than architectural to the sonic space. However, while the ambiance might be spectral, IVVY’s hard driving but minimal rhythms are the focus here, and they animate these tracks with an insistent and kinetic energy.
On the EP’s title track, a ringing pulse is stretched out into a metallic fog via heavy reverb before a galloping kick sets this track off and running. The drum elements are kept strictly minimal on the cut with only the subtle tick of high hat marking the back beat. Soon though, the echo of an acid tinged bass line casts a moving shadow as strange almost beast-like grunts and snorts ghost around in the grooving gloom.
Listen: IVVY ‘Safe Within’ EP
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