Herva - What I Feel EP [dsr-e2] by Delsin Records

Having unleashed his debut LP on Bosconi Records last year, Italian Herva here serves up four new tracks for the second in Delsin’s electronica series. They see him move away from the house of his debut, and instead explore atmospheric worlds of sound that are part techno, part IDM and part something all together new.

Opener ‘Paranoid Thinking’ emerges from a sea of underwater bleeps and bells into a frantic, heavily textured soundscape with no real beat but many layers of glistening, harmonic sound. ‘Crocodile Tears’ is slight more conventional, but still seems constructed from snippets of pianos, finger clicks, squelchy percussion and more, with each element piled on top of each other into a beguiling tapestry.

‘Gorilla’s Machine’ sounds like Four Tet making techno - lots of splintered melodies bring plenty of light to the quick, dark and pummelling techno undercurrent that props the whole thing up. Finally, ‘Snow And Clouds’ sees a stiff kick drum lean into a snowy blizzard of fine grain sonics with the odd spoken word breaking through at freaky intervals. One thing’s for sure here – there is nothing conventional about Herva’s techno.