Vaghe Stelle – Hyper

If someone were to blindly play you the opening bars of Italian producer Vaghe Stelle’s “Hyper” without any context whatsoever, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were listening to an outtake of Arca’s Xen. In fact, still firmly caught in the web of that astounding release ourselves, it’s easy to forget that the warped tones and digital dissonance of tracks like “Thievery”, “Xen” and “Sad Bitch” are not entirely unique to a single artist. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Borne from the same scene as fellow boundary-pushing Southerners Dracula Lewis and Lorenzo Senni, Vaghe Stelle’s latest output adheres to a long lineage of forward-thinking club abstractions that may themselves be the genesis of Xen. Out on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People, Abstract Speed + Sound might be a world away from the left-field techno of last year’s Astro:Dynamics release, but it’s no less infectious.