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Via SoundCloud

Shit Robot lays all his cards out on the table with his new single, "OB-8," which takes its title from an iconic analog synthesizer from the early '80s. Check out a demo of the machine: That's the sound, all right—a warm, liquid tone with a texture like raw silk. But whatever process-oriented mysteries the German producer lays bare in his hat-tip to Tom Oberheim's masterpiece, he compensates by filling the track itself with intrigue.

Not a lot happens during its seven-and-a-half-minute run: the steady, ostinato bassline rolls out its eighth-note pulse from end to end, and there's no melody to speak of, just minor-key chords, overlaid like lighting gels, which turn the air soupy and iridescent. But it's precisely in those shifting atmospheres that the tune takes on its softly shaded drama. It hides birdsong within its folds, and a woman sighing, and running water, too; more than once the telltale call of the loon rings out—a hat-tip to a different reference, this time to a classic Balearic trope.

Once you've submitted to the track's hypnotic pull, the changes that do happen—when handclaps dissolve into a bubbling chain of dub delay, or a chord leaves a glowing portamento tracer as it leaps up and down the stave—come to seem unusually monumental. Occasionally, it even feels like the tempo is speeding up or slowing down, as though you were caught in a Doppler-effected whirlpool. It feels like moving fast and standing still all at once, and it's as mesmerizing as house music gets.

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