Newcomer label Substrato features Dorian Gray on its third release. Gray, AKA Moreno Mariotti, is an Italian-based artist whose music culls from a broad range of influences that rest somewhere between surrealism and sci-fi. This third installation is a canvas of obscure atmospheres and hypnagogic patterns, the textures of which play to the label's orientation towards the acoustics that embody subterranean and submerged worlds.
Gray's EP creates a feeling of being within the presence of a constructive type of nature where organic and artificial sound coexist in harmony. A Winking Light In The Dark and The Access To A Parallel Plane Of Existence both make use of acquatic samples overlaid with a futurist atmosphere and straightforward beats. Extraordinary Day On The Exoplanet is perhaps the most overt iteration of the delicate balance that Gray strikes between modernist and shamanistic impulses: Gray's original version is ambient and imbued with layered samples that stretch over the length of the track, where BUCK's remix is more dance-oriented, incorporating structure, rhythm, and strokes of differently cut melodies into Gray's ethereal soundscape.
The slow rhythms and repetitive atmopsheres in 003 transport the listener to a new environment. Already able to boast a discography that includes Artefakt and Edit Select, Substrato has firmly established itself as a formidable force in dark, atmospheric techno, particularly with the pertinence of this most recent release.