REVIEW: Tellus – Serendipity EP [Modern Conveniences]

Akuratyde’s Modern Conveniences label has built an impressive collection of releases at the more personal and introspective end of drum & bass over the past several years.  This year’s Revised Futures remix compilation encapsulates the label’s focus on the emotive, reflecting the continued influence of autonomic alongside the meditative possibilities of jungle and drum & bass explored by, say, Photek and Source Direct.  These influences lead to a keen interest in the creation of space within the frenetic rhythmic structures of drum & bass; of creating spaciousness and room to breathe by hollowing out these structures, rebuilding them, and/or rendering breakbeats as a form of texture over movement. It is music that finds itself sharing a long history with those looking to play with, alter, and disrupt the codified genre expectations of drums & bass to allow space for softness, delicacy, warmth, loneliness, melancholia, and quiet reflections on our interactions with social space.

Residing in Tasmania, Australia, this is Tellus’ third release for Modern Conveniences and follows the magical Shrouded in Sun EP from 2021.  Compared to the wide beachside roads and hazy sun-drenched warmth of Shrouded, Serendipity is nocturnal, its mood more confined.  It moves through dense urban spaces, overflowing with incessant, pulsating artificial light.  The music invites us to drift, somewhat, through our cities at night, a soundtrack for disappearing into the comfort and pleasure of sensory overload.

EP opener ‘Drifting Sand’ is a spacious, relaxed number.  Minimalist kicks, soft pattering percussion, and rippling synth stabs provide a background for a simple, pensive little melody.  This is followed by EP highlight ‘Pipeline’.  It is Tellus at his most danceable, a tune that sits somewhere between State of Mind’s ‘Dirt’ and aspects of dbridge and Kid Drama’s work on the Pleasure District sublabel.  Its rolling rhythm of cold, incessant machinic precision peppered with disembodied, breathy vocal fragments evokes both the regimentation of movement through automation and a concern with the emotional life of artificial intelligence, respectively.  It goes pretty hard, too.

‘Irukandji’ similarly shares Pleasure District inflections, but more related to how rhythm is utilized.  All pace is stripped from the music, rendering time almost static.  An atemporal zone for quiet, slow exploration accompanied by flittering bleeps of melody.  Next, ‘Long Way Back’ is an excellent exercise in building tension.  A simple yet hefty bassline underpins an array of lowkey yet increasingly pressing elements.  Flanged chords, staccato synth arpeggios, soaring air raid sirens, even a break or two.  Great.

The EP finishes with ‘Up River’, a collaboration with Akuratyde and a beatless reworking of their 2020 track ‘Down River’.  It’s a bit of a detour from preceding tracks, its ambience more naturalistic.  There are birds, trees swaying gently, creeks, and a warm, lush, comforting blanket of bass.  It’s a lovely little piece of music.  It may jar somewhat from the thematic consistency of Serendipity, but that consistency is largely a narrative I’ve invented and overlaid on the music.  There are five really good, interesting tunes on this release, and ‘Pipeline’ helps make it excellent.