"8004’s work is a reminder that dub techno is a weather condition. The six tracks need to be turned up to a volume where the kick is felt more than heard, and what you’re left with is the fog of static between everything."
8004’s latest release is their second with Kino Disk following up on early 2025’s 8001 / 8003, a two-track ambient exploration that floats at the outer limits of Kino’s collection. This new, longer release is an embodiment of dread. It’s easy to imagine oneself working their way through a storm for the full runtime of these six tracks.
As for Kino Disk, there is something immediately alluring about what they’re doing. All releases are physical (almost entirely dubplates), and everything digital is available for free on Bandcamp. The dubplate is the possession of choice, though rare to grab before they’re gone.
Kino is uncompromising in its curation and approach. Some of the disk labels appear like an unearthed artefact, or maybe an aberration of light captured in a photograph. The music is a nebulous cloud touching on the purely ambient, on dub techno, and on IDM. Somehow, even within the confines of the aesthetic, it’s never predictable, and the quality is consistently outstanding. It’s a sound that is often oozing with texture, at times a blend of musique concrète and ambient music, often ominous, even unsettling, but always operating on the outside of what’s typical.
As those two tracks from early ‘25 did, this new release by 8004 throbs like ungrounded electricity in a dense fog. Here, though, the tracks occasionally step out into full view. The eponymously named 8004 is a work of dark drama across six scenes. Each track is cut from the same material, but at different depths of focus. It’s a choice example of what Kino has to offer, not only because it exemplifies the label’s textural depth and signature collapsing haze, but also because it has a compositional range that punches well above its weight.
“8000 dub” is a pulsating, polyrhythmic meditation that ebbs forward and backward. Like the bodily processes we all know, the waves of a migraine, the beating of your heart, and the unrelenting pulse of blood that carry through the veins, this too flows over the body. It’s a standout track, not just on this record, but across the range of Kino. Though it only lasts 7 minutes, it feels inescapable.
“8005 dub” plays with the same kinetic energy of “8000 dub”, though perhaps more expository in nature than the all-out drama of the opening track. It’s an invention of rhythm that tracks somewhere between Huerco S. and Basic Channel. The minor stabs and volted air feel informed by traditional dub techno, though the conditions here are particularly tortured.
“8007” approaches the record’s most dancefloor-ready moments, but even this greatly subverts those expectations, instead ruminating on a pensiveness that exists somewhere outside the club itself. While there is a beat underneath there somewhere, the focus is on the electrical current flowing through the foreground synths. Throughout all these tracks, there’s a raininess that feels ever-present. On this track, it’s quieter, but it’s there.
And “8002 dub” is a complete 180 from “8007”. Here, 8004 is at their most distant, their furthest away from civilisation, like existing on the outskirts of a city, a place distant but just close enough to hear the din of the night glowing from the centre of it all. Still, the electrical signal is pervasive, as if the aether itself, the air that holds us, is composed of it. It is a moment on the release where we’re suddenly given an expanded view, a vantage point that is further than what was previously allowed to us. It’s a peak into the more unsettling sides that the label isn’t afraid to showcase.
As on “8007”, “8023 dub” again returns with a beat, but it never quite makes its way there. It’s beautifully reminiscent of GAS’s most arresting work. The steady kick almost feels like the trace remnants of an earlier music, a music that has since been washed away. What’s not tarnished by time is the ambient cloud of minor wind working its way through the track.
Finally, with “8007 dub”, amidst the swirling of electrical current, a portal opens up, and the sound that had originally captivated us is pulled outwhere. It’s a strangely ominous way to end the release.
8004’s work is a reminder that dub techno is a weather condition. The six tracks need to be turned up to a volume where the kick is felt more than heard, and what you’re left with is the fog of static between everything.
8004 is out now via Kino Disk. Buy a vinyl copy from Inverted Audio Record Store.
TRACKLIST
1. 8000 dub
2. 8005 dub
3. 8007
4. 8002 dub
5. 8023 dub
6. 8007 dub