- Ital's change in direction circa 2014 was guided by a couple of formative DJ sets, as he told Will Lynch last year. One, from Function, was ear-opening for an artist coming from the scrappier DIY dance scene. "It totally blew my mind," Ital said. "I thought, 'This is what music can be like.'" The Berghain resident's hi-def techno still echoes through Ital's productions. "Hellhole," on his own Lovers Rock label, is pretty damn close to his own description of that set: "intense, futuristic, and yet very emotionally open and beautiful." The future comes from the careful sound design: atonal synth flutters marking unsettled time, what might be processed birdsong, filtered so that it weaves through sculpted reverb tails. The beauty comes from the drifting melody, which starts low and then rises as if carried on invisible thermals.
On the other side of the 12-inch, "False Flag" has a similar mood, suspended in breakdown mode. Its sleek arps would sound sunkissed were they not darkened by low-end tones. Both tracks are impressively subtle and emotive. The only part of the Function formula that's missing is "intense"—a weakness on "Can't Stand It," which aims for a runaway drum track à la DJ Deep's "Stressed" but falls short. The tempo (around 120 BPM) can't carry the momentum, and the densely layered percussion is sharp but sounds imprecise. When another of Ital's icy melodies enters in the latter half, its cool balm doesn't quite feel earned.
TracklistA1 Hellhole
B1 Can't Stand It
B2 False Flag