Chronicles I

Luke Slater‘s more dreamy mid-90s “listening techno” as The 7th Plain didn’t get quite the acclaim of contemporaries like The Future Sound of London and Global Communication — probably because it was eclipsed by his more slamming output under his own name and as Planetary Assault Systems. But it absolutely deserves to be reckoned as some of the greatest electronica of its age, and we should be grateful to Berlin’s Ostgut Ton — home of Slater’s latter-day output — for compiling it. This collection is worth the price of entry for the heart-stopping “Grace” alone, but every track dazzles. There’s Detroit-indebted upbeat tracks, slow breaks, total ambience, but always with glassy, cosmic synth tones gliding across one another in gorgeous melodic sync.