SPACE BREAKIN' WITH T++

Since the mid-90s, Torsten Pröfrock has been steadily releasing music under various alias for labels like Chain Reaction and his own DIN imprint, as well as collaborating with Monolake. I heard a rumour that he was the man responsible for "Infrared Glow", the fourth release for Sleeparchive, too. At the end of last year he released two simultaneous twelves for the Erosion label, under the new moniker T++. Of the two, it was "Space Pong/Space Break" that really stood out as some kind of new direction - like he'd invented his own microgenre that combined spacey elements of dub techno and abstract minimal digitalia within an extended, organically undulating breaks style far removed from anything conventionally labeled 'breakbeat'. The beats were synthetic and heavily processed but a million miles from the Nu Breaks scene, so I just call his sound Spacebreakz. Earlier this year he followed up with "Allied/Tensile", which added some serious low-end frequencies into the mix, and now comes another chapter in Pröfrock's rhythmic voyage, in the shape of "Worn Down/100 Bar". Once again I find myself listening in a state of fascination and incredulity: what the fuck is this shit?! The discombobulating beats continue to writhe and morph into unpredictable shapes, whilst somehow retaining an irresistible funk factor. There's no discernible basslines, melodies or anything approximating a conventional structure, yet the tracks are packed with sonic information; an hallucinatory miasma of warped frequencies and noxious clouds of synth texture that collide and coalesce in startlingly unfamiliar ways. Abstract, amorphous, yet primed for dancefloor devastation, it seems like Pröfrock has struck gold with a sound that, to my ears at least, simultaneously moves techno, breaks, dub and leftfield into a genuinely new creative zone. I hope everyone's taking notice...