Planet Mu

Tristan Douglas (a.k.a. Antwood) returns with a new 5 track EP 'Alousia', his first new material in two years.

"With Alousia I wanted to play with and celebrate dance music, not ‘subvert’ it like I did on my previous albums," Tristan says. Nods to genres like trance, gabber, donk and electro can be heard in Alousia’s textures and rhythmic palette. However, after listening to the EP, one is left with the sense that a larger idea is pinning the work together.

 "While making Alousia I had the idea of 'pillars' and 'stylites' stuck in my head. For whatever reason, these concepts matched how I think of dance music – at least the parts of dance music I like the best – the parts that feel expansive, unambiguous and purposeful like towering monuments. I wanted Alousia to have this expansive feeling.”

The EP begins almost silently with “Pillar of Inversions,” where dusty layers of hardware trance slowly build and entwine until abruptly exploding into a euphoric drop: the first of Tristan’s “sound pillars”. The second track, “Liquid & Digits,” presents itself as a no-nonsense electro cut, but takes unlikely twists and dips while coming across feeling somehow like devotional music. “Trance Pillar” takes its time gaining momentum, as trance synth lines and flutes weave an intricate and bittersweet web of harmony and melody ultimately culminating in a powerful, syncopated gabber payoff. “Daniel the Stylite” meanwhile starts off deceptively poppy until it switches into gloggy nu-metal boogie. Finally, “Elder Theme” closes the EP, feeling less like an ending and more like an intermission, or perhaps a gateway into something else.