Telefon Tel Aviv’s Joshua Eustis and Belong’s Turk Dietrich are Second Woman, a duo specialised in remodelling early 2000’s glitch music with artful, cold dystopian rhythms and dramatic sound arrangements. Last year, they surfaced with a self-titled debut album, offering nine well-detailed tracks, merging influences of ambient, IDM and dub. It was nostalgic and very forward-thinking at the same time, and now feels like one of the most underrated albums of 2016.
Second Woman will return this year with another album (entitled ‘S/W‘), but before that, they are releasing an EP of new material and a pair of excellent remixes as an amuse-bouche. Echoes and vibrations are the key elements in the two new tracks (‘I E/P‘, ‘II E/P‘), the hypermodern representation through a VR lens results in an even finer-tuned sound, compared to previous works. Whilst the first track is a heavy affair of pulsing electromagnetic bass, the second track evokes some of the best memories from previous abstract masterpieces, especially with SND in mind. Their upcoming album could be one of the standout moments in 2017.
Natural progression can be heard on Jlin’s version, as the remixes come in. The change in tempo, the rapid drums and the equally sliced sections make the track a boldly calculated equation of ever-evolving sound design, like Jlin was always an experimental sound sculptor first, and a juke producer second.
Fluxion closes the EP with a brief, Blade Runner like melody and some fading shouts in the distance, and then, from the fourth minute or so, it ventures into an artificial dimension, as the slow repetition of dub chords and the humming minimal electronica of advanced machinery take over. Overall, it is more like a nod toward Vladislav Delay than his millennial dub techno roots.
E/P is out now on Spectrum Spools, order a digital version from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
1. I E/P
2. II E/P
3. VII (Jlin)
4. CC (Fluxion)
Discover more about Second Woman and Spectrum Spools on Inverted Audio.