Twenty-two-year-old Norwegian producer Polar (Kjetil Dale Sagstaad - sometimes monikers are for the best) has consistently proved his ability to casually erase boundaries between genres and come up with original sounds.
His debut LP, 'moving' confirms his unique vision beyond all doubt and should set him up as one of drum & bass's most prodigious talents.
'Bipolar Suns' kickstarts the project and hints at what's in store as a steady thrum works itself into some deep, abstracted electro. 'Backlight', the first tune to be carved from a drum & bass format highlights the labyrinthine quality of Polar's production. His beats stamp and punch and dance across a shadowy but addictive world where demonic laughter and the drip drip of thawing stalagmites echo through cavernous networks of sound.
Most of the album in fact has this eerie, futuristic quality to it (aside from 'Inside The Plot', a concession to figurative sound sculpture with it's thin beats and pin-sharp harmonics). From track four onwards we are presented with a series of downtempo tracks ('Nascent Dream', 'Near The Horizon', 'White Walls', 'The White Chambers'), somnambulist soundtracks that depict urban exoticism and interplanetary isolation.
The latter part of the album is made up of punchier, grimmer and even angrier d & b fare. Thin strips of sound still glide through the album like piranhas through mercury, but the beats have teeth too and there's a distinctly mechanical approach at work.
By the time we get to the finale (previous single 5am), this has been an utterly unique and spellbinding journey, drenched in chemical excess, paranoid dream-states and uncanny sonic precision. One of the finest electronic, post-drum & bass narratives this year.
