Even from an preliminary scan of the tracklist, it’s clear that Self-discipline is a unique sort of Shinichi Atobe album. The Japanese producer normally scatters numbered sequences of tracks out of order throughout his data, suggesting a small choice from an unlimited Aphexian archive whose scale we are able to solely guess at. “Ocean 1” and “Ocean 7” turned up on 2020’s Sure, as an illustration, however “Ocean 2” didn’t seem till 2022’s Love of Plastic, and if there are extra within the sequence, we’ll have to attend to listen to them. Self-discipline, in the meantime, is a finite sequence: “SA DUB 1” by “SA DUB 8,” every observe in the best order, every bearing the load of the 46-minute album roughly equally. No cryptic interludes, no lifeless ends, nothing remotely as unusual as “Rain 6,” from his Peace of Thoughts EP simply three months in the past: simply eight rock-solid variations on a theme that add as much as one thing extra like Donato Dozzy’s austere style workouts than Atobe’s normal rabbit holes.
Self-discipline houses in on a selected sound, debuted earlier this 12 months on “Dub 6(six),” the B-side of a limited-edition single for DDS: a midpoint between the dub techno of Atobe’s earlier releases and the sunnier home sound he’s been transferring in the direction of since 2018’s Warmth. The time period “dub techno” usually implies a wet, vaporous pressure of music that usually drifts into pure ambient abstraction; Atobe’s labored on this mode earlier than, most notably on his canonical Ship-Scope EP from 2001, however this can be a totally different interpretation of what these two phrases can imply in tandem. Self-discipline is much less occupied with creating a way of house, which is normally the start line for techno producers appropriating methods from Jamaican dub, than in utilizing delay to create rhythmic curiosity. It’s extra BCD-2 than BCD: Atobe threads spiderwebs of echo between his pistoning home chords as sturdy drum patterns pump away, and the one “ambient” observe, “SA DUB 5,” simply appears like an acid home observe with the drums snipped out.
Atobe’s been posting lots of Smiths movies on Twitter these days, and his keyboard sounds reveal his romantic tendencies. “SA DUB 8” is embellished by rosy Yamaha DX-7 arpeggios seemingly ripped from an ’80s adult-contemporary ballad, whereas the beautiful echoing piano that’s change into one thing like Atobe’s signature works additional time on “SA DUB 7.” “SA DUB 5” won’t be as woozy or mysterious as a few of Atobe’s earlier beatless tracks, however every particular person chord blossoms like a time-lapse of a budding flower as a ticklish TR-303 floats deep within the combine. Little staticky rustles and hisses discover their means into the areas between the drums, and from time to time we hear temporary samples of feminine voices that sound like they had been recorded by a cellphone speaker held as much as a mic. These idiosyncratic touches carry selection and a splash of sentimentality to a document that may in any other case come off as a proper experiment.
Up to now, Atobe’s music usually proceeded from an alien logic. At its most excessive (2014’s Butterfly Impact, 2016’s World), his music sounds extra like one thing naturally fashioned, or washed up on a seashore, than made by human fingers. Atobe’s press-shyness and the 13-year hole between Ship-Scope and Butterfly Impact have solely fueled his mystique, resulting in hypothesis about when (and even by whom) the music on his post-hiatus releases was made. Self-discipline strips away any such thriller, displaying his music’s logic up on the board for all to see. There’s nothing right here that appears to have made its means into the music by chance, and the document is joyful to stake out a small patch of musical territory quite than continuing from the apparently limitless thickets of Atobe’s creativeness. However inside these slim parameters is a riot of talent and invention, with simply sufficient of a glimpse into the obsessions of the person behind the music to make it really feel like Atobe’s most private document but.