The Thousands

From a satellite outpost in Sydney, Mark Pritchard gets pitch-perfect reception of his homeland UK’s hyper evolutionary electronic music present. Dubsteb, Bassline House and implacable native talents Rustie, Hudson Mohawke and Dexplicit’s fixations with warbling, hugely deep bass, dystopic street dub griminess, high-def re-modeling of hip-hop’s cut and funk, eerie feelings of petrifying technology and Ravey, brain-zapping gamesole effects all come into his debut album as Harmonic 313, WHEN MACHINES EXCEED HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, but from a parallax view; as seen through an Autechre-knowing glass obliquely.**Clinically executed, as you’d expect of anything on Warp Records, WHEN MACHINES… may not have the urgency of this week’s Rinse FM programming, but its tidy recapitulation of trends aired on the station, ’90s ambient-tech, Flying Lotus-type digital textures and everything else new from the past little while is as classy and resolved as electronic music gets. Opener, ‘Dirtbox’, is blueprint Dubstep, easing you in to Pritchard’s liquid treatment of the style, before tracks like ‘Galag-a’, ‘Word Problems’ and the jaw-dropping ‘Koln’ expand its sub-fequency predilections. Also features Speak n Spell samples and faux library interludes.