Butter Sessions presents Roy Batty Jr’s follow-up to last year's tape Scope Dynamic (Ken Oath) with a four-track digital EP Dash Retention. This release was conceptualised whilst travelling through South America and completed shortly after returning to Summer Hill, Sydney in the summer of 2018. Roy cites the disparate landscapes of Peru and Bolivia as visual influences for his new EP, stating “within one frame there could be a lake, past that sparse fields into plateaus and past that snow-capped mountains, it didn’t make sense.”

Roy’s preference for the field recording returns in this release; many of which came from the trip. He features the sounds of industrial stamped foley to escort disjointed tech-step. The first half of the release is a treat for the vigilant listener, who will be alerted to recordings of a throttling chain saw, shattering glass, and a barking dog, interjected with drum & bass tinged percussion. Gai Hills features an elating melody paired with jerky percussion. It’s dream music but not as you know it.

In contrast, the second half of Dash Retention pulls us gently along the forest floor with its new-age nuance, obvious in the EP’s endnote Treast. As a body, Dash Retention congregates Roy’s jarring visions with twisted rhythms, sometimes staggering structure and bass-heavy production; marking a clever oscillation between styles but separates the EP from the IDM tag.