Soreab
CU
POLAAR
To date, the majority of Dario Picchi’s output as Soreab has been quite maximalist in approach. The London-based Italian artist found a throughline between amorphous bass music, jungle-coded breakbeat science and techno economy to develop a sound that aligns with labels like XCPT, Blank Mind and a scattered network of operators exploring a broken, bass-heavy variation on the wider deep techno scene. His own Baroque Sunburst imprint has also become one of the key outposts for this vaguely defined thread. As with so many “scenes” these days, it’s a hint of a sound populated by artists with more individualist approaches, rather than a strict set of sonic codes, and Picchi himself has flexed freely and comfortably between distinct styles from record to record.
That makes his move to Flore’s Lyon-based bastion POLAAR an interesting one, as he pivots towards a particularly boiled-down, brutalist deviation from his more flowing, organic flourishes. There are hints of the minimalist grime streak he once displayed on his Perspectives EP for Accidental Meetings, but he’s never pared his music back so ruthlessly before, leaning on full-frequency kicks and micro-percussion that doubles as textural intrigue. He can open the filters up towards stern technoid peaks (“CU7”) and abandon drums in favour of dramatic, articulate sound design in the dark ambient realm. Double-time hard techno kicks sit adjacent to oddly angled moments of polymetric exploration.
CU casts a forbidding space that calls to mind Emptyset’s monochromatic sound excursions, but Picchi does find small pockets for softness and delicacy to offer a necessary degree of nuance to proceedings. It’s this quality that makes the music compelling, as each piece takes his exacting, synthesis-forward approach into a new lattice of steel patterns and concrete textures.
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