Carrier - Tender Spirits (12")

Carrier’s celebrated run of self-seeded 12”s embraces more romantic and slowed down strains of bass+drum pressure on his first move of 2025, yielding to lushly plangent pads and vaporous percussive contrails on a tip somewhere between the deepest ends of Photek, classic Mo' Wax and T++. Aye it’s a killer!!!

Fully locked into his stripped rhythmic mode as Carrier, Guy Brewer’s cultishly adored project continues to make vital alterations with each instalment, with ‘Tender Spirits’ honing a keener focus on spatial nuance and tip-toed percussive balance within the long shadow of influence cast by Photek thru T++ and his DIN label. 

The three tracks unfurl elements of gossamer touch pads and thizzing drum hits in the craftiest permutations of a personalised physics, as derived from his close reading of UK ‘nuum styles as much as their parallels in Berlin techno, and tied by his understanding of classic dub and ambient metaphysics. 

It’s all poetically evoked in the breathtaking, buoyant lushness of ‘Light Candles, to Mark the Way’ which feels like a skeletal reworking of Torsten Pröfrock’s pre-T++ work as Dynamo, all iced pads and bare-boned drums. ‘Slow Punctures’ is deadlier still, adding woodblock and gamelan chimes thru purposefully displaced syncopations like the T++ x Photek hookup of our dreams, while ‘Carpathian’ does a thing with brushed cymbals that will completely ruin you when played at volume, made in the spirit of Photek’s jazz-kissed ‘The Hidden Camera’ with riding hi hats flickering like ghostly silhouettes.

A growing, single-minded confidence in his thing practically makes time stand still and places us right in the moment and momentum of the music. Crucially, whilst clearly referencing foundational styles, it’s a masterclass in innovation not imitation, primed for deep satisfaction if you've held a thing for this sound over the years. 

The deepest, deadliest club music around atm, no question.