PREMIERE: Orion - Lie (Luigi Tozzi Remix) [Orion]

Blame the treacherous winds of COVID pandemic and its concomitant quarantine, excessive drinking, zoom parties, and slow internet connections, but Delayed has clearly been binging on the dark sounds of dub techno lately. We've certainly written our share of dub techno reviews. And just when our dub techno crate started to overflow and to aurally blend into one giant ball of dark beats and muffled sounds, salvation comes to us straight out of the Vatican…or, at least, Rome.

Luigi Tozzi, one of the pre-eminent producers in hypnotic techno--a grey cardinal of dark beats if you will--must have either heard our muted cries at Delayed or must have also overdosed on dub during the pandemic: his remix of Orion's Lie takes a dubby dark skeleton and injects it with much-needed drive and energy. The track is still a dark, sparse echo-y goodness, but it's been wakened from its dub coma by delicate percussive fluttering and distant atmospheric drops of sound that are Luigi's calling cards and that balance the track so well. It is as if a colorful little bird flew into a dungeon, surprising everyone and diluting the gloom. Here's hoping that this is not a canary in a coal mine!