Manveer Dheensa is best known for his productions under the nickname Manni Dee - hard and fast techno with one eye on the overdrive, the other on the dancefloor. His side-project, Nuances is the antethesis of that. A heavy use of foley, faded orchestral timbres and a reverb doused tonal palette typify the project best. This provides a welcome tranquility from the rough-shod warehouse thumpers he has contributed to labels like Candela Rising or Black Sun Records under the Manni Dee tag. Preserve The Sanctity of Sound spans six, heat-warped film-scapes for Bastakiya Tapes, a cassette label offshoot of Bedouin Records.
The EP’s track titles only serve to enhance the cinematic nature of the release; ‘Her Daughter & The 7.30 Train’ or ‘The Last Ten Seconds Of Life’ dividing the release like chapters of a novel. Opener ‘Faded To The Fringes’ sets a world-weary precedent for the rest of the cassette, heaving choral timbres growing progressively more outspoken as the track builds to an amp-buzzing close.
Loosely, the tracks could be considered in the same vein as William Basinski, Fennesz or Loscil - on the one hand warm and inviting, on the other feverish and cloying. ‘I’m Going To Meet The One I Love’ is a good example of this. Despite its rich tapestry of strings there is something conversely faintly nauseating about the way they sway to and fro, as if stumbling drunkenly on a ship’s deck. As with many others on the release the track also possesses an opiate-like, slow-motion quality, also put to good use across closer ‘A Gasp Of Cold Air’.
In comparison ‘Sleep On & Dream Of Love’ is positively full-throttle. It’s shuffling, Burial-esque two-step rhythms are covered with swells of reverb, silk-spun reversed hits and oceanic rumbles. Prior to this we are treated to a notably more subtle percussive experiment - Dheensa uses timid static loops and wooden taps, as if someone were rapping their fingers on a desk nervously between Dheensa’s feather light melodies.
Preserve The Sanctity Of Sound makes an impressive debut for the Nuances project, providing a selection of tracks which compliment each other beautifully, highlighting a certain fragility you’d be hard pushed to find on Dheensa’s other assorted projects.