I didn’t realize the appeal of Sleeparchive very much until I had the pleasure of hearing “Elephant Island” for the first time. That’s when their sonic bleep techno began to make obvious and banging sense. But, for the most part, their (?) (people say it’s Hawtin and I can believe that) releases have been too abstract and obfuscatory to warrant the salivating that some quarters have lavished on the product thus far. “Infrared Glow” continues along in this vein, sadly, with “Galactic Chaos” and “Galactic Blob” languishing in a place that can only be worthwhile when used as augmentation for other tracks. “Dusty Galaxies,” though, gets closest to the sublime in rehashing much of “Elephant Island”’s groove to great effect. If you’re a fan, it’ll be more brilliance. But not a place to start.

Sleeparchive / ZZZ 04
[Todd Burns]