Oliver Coates, Spatial - Decouple ]( Series (2019)

Cellist Oliver Coates and minimalist garage explorer Spatial make for the starkest contrast yet in OOH-Sounds’ Decouple ][ series

On his half ‘Path in, J Lover One, Yomi, Umbo’ Coates stitches four pieces into a single 12 minute work following a dream logic, as he explains: “They are contradictory, non-developmental and block-like, sitting across from each other like David Lynch's Rabbits.” Fanning out from acoustic strings and space-gauging electronics to pizzicato string plucks and ultimately howling samples and crushed breaks that release in a junglist eruption at the end, it’s a dead trippy piece that lives up to its oneiric underpinnings.

Spatial on the other hans offers a pair of cranky, grubbing electro-dubs in the Alva Noto-gone-scuzzy style that he’s been pursuing over recent years. ‘Reification’ is a drily swung stepper that recalls darker take on Beatrice Dillon’s nifty nudges, and ‘Residual’ pushes that aesthetic even further with charred subs and brittle, eczema-like electronic textures.