With a glorious flourish of melodious club abstraction, cult producer Quirke makes a welcome return by delivering his most upfront tracks to date for Dekmantel.

Josh Quirke first came through on Young Turks (Young) and Whities (AD93) through the 2010s, offering a distinctive, slanted take on hardcore and house music alike that came shrouded in dense atmospherics and shot through with wistful melancholia. Comparisons to artists like Burial and Skee Mask weren't unfounded, but Quirke was very much operating on his own terms, as he has continued to ever since. The last we heard from the low-key producer was his debut album Steal A Golden Hail, released on Whities in 2019, and now he comes through with a strong update to his sound that finds a natural home on Dekmantel.

It's clear from the structural shifts in lead track 'Underdetermined' that Quirke is operating free from the so-called 'rules' of dance music, veering from a pure synth intro straight into the full peak of the track without so much as a warm-up. Placing emotionality ahead of functionality, 'Underdetermined' manages to be every inch an anthem.

'The OT3' deals in denser percussive textures and haunted pads, with ample room for wistful sentimentality and a steady trucking kick. On 'Worth Variation', the array of blown-out elements are glued together into a dub techno pulse, where every atmospheric impulse feels like part of the groove. 'Ten Times Over Crystal Fruit' completes the record across a grand sweep of narrative arrangement, shifting through phases and heavy layers of joyful noise. It's intense and delicate in equal measure, absolutely ready to move a mass of bodies but without ever deferring to the familiar.

Quirke happily avoids engagement with the wider scene while making his truly individual music, but he himself admits he struck upon a dimension of his sound that could explore immediacy and impact without losing the subtle, smudged-out beauty inherent in his musical DNA.