A new project named SECT and tracktitles in latin: far enough to let you think youre facing a proper release for hipsters... Until you press play! After a quiet decade, an artist who is everything but a beginner started this new project and shared a couple of unreleased tracks on youtube. All very discretely and throughout elegant and sober background videos. "Prima Aurationis" was the first one we heard. It didn't take too long for us to contact him and discuss a possible release once we had a few listens to these brilliantly airy tracks full of elegance, details and precision. All we can say about the person behind this name is that he's a french artist who has already released some electronic music in the past, enough said for now. Not that there's anything to be ashamed of throughout his early discography. No more than we'd want to play with mystery. In fact, it wouldn't be too hard for anyone to check the artist's real name and make a quick search on discogs... It's a small scene after all! It's rather because these new SECT tracks don't have much to do with what the artist was doing ten years ago, and so we'd better focus on their superb content. Some producers are following a route that is obvious and all mapped out. Some others are being a little bit more hesitant, making pauses, breaks, or even adapting their sound in order to fit trends and hype. But rarely, very rarely you see a producer doing such a long break and finally reaching his very own sound in later life. Quite surprising indeed but there's no doubt SECT maintained contact with electronic music's greatest spheres. No doubt neither that he kept on listening new releases weekly and collecting records. We all know that this passion for electronic music is the most addictive thing ever and one can start new projects, move from a city to another, get a job, but could hardly detach himself or herself from quality underground techno and house. It is possible that a whole ten years period of checking, listening and playing records had a notable and significant influence on SECT, but that doesn't explain such an exquisite, sharp and clear-cut sound that feels like it's out of a lenghty maturation and required a long ageing period. What is also striking about these tracks is how deeply they are linked one with another and how well they belong to their Ep. Like it was just different versions of one or two initial theme tracks. As if SECT has played with his track's content subtly, taking a drum which had a relatively trivial role in one track or a pad that was deliberately a background element to the one and only leading lead element of another track. This way, we quickly got from two initial picks to an extended 7 tracks release which looks more like an album or a "mini-album". This indissoluble bond ties each track with another "twin track" (being the closest from the original one in terms of structure, scale, mixdown) but each track is also tied with every others for a number of reasons. It is like organic growth; explosive and exponential expansion that is almost frightening in a way, and makes it feel like perhaps only 0,1 percent of what this artist can bring has been done yet and that what you're hearing is just abstract potentiality, only bits, only few lucky exports among a mass growing in the shadow of possibilities and "exportable" tracks. What else to say? Well, yes a few influences could be heard. Perhaps a little bit of italian trade mark techno of the likes of Donato Dozzy, Marco Shuttle, Luigi Tozzi... Maybe a little bit of Semantica in terms of mixdown and foreground/background-correlation... Also a bit of Dj Koze's brightest days and his instant classic "XTC"... That is easily observable and probably noteworthy but that's all. Each of these influences is well digested, and completely embedded into this artist's wires & cables palette. In fact, SECT had no plan, no release plan nor any production plan. He was just feeling the urge and need to get back at making music, any music. And this absence of well-defined goal and purpose has ironically brought some of the most inspired, inspirational and inspiring tracks we have heard in a long while. Serious electronic stuff halfway between ambient and techno that sounds like it has already stood the test of time, and so even before it's out. Steaming and smoky 4/4 techno tracks which are as detailed and profound as experimental or ambient tracks. These tracks are also full of contrast, they are like fog over a sunlit peak or like nervous yoga. Screaming and harassing vocals which remind some of the best tracks of 2010 "dark" minimal techno era, when artists like Exercise One, Marek Bois, Alexi Delano and Tim Xavier were leading figures of a niche subgenre that would soon reach it's limits. But here this vocal work is standing on top of highly hypnotic drums routes, in a context never heard before (Quintus Orationis and Septima Orationis). Throughout the whole Ep tracklist, SECT goes on, takes a technique he used back in 2008 and incorporates in the midst of a super effective low-toms armada, then remixes his own tracks, makes another one, deletes the previous and only makes a selection at last minute, leaving a hard but very interested job to the label selector. In a way, he plays with his own work, plays with the listener and doesn't take himself nor his work too seriously. It's only this way that he has fun and that's all good for us! The result is a sharpened and refined blending of underground electronic subgenres full of audacious choices, with a door open to crazy and deliciously absurd ideas. A release which is ready and certified for the dancefloor but will also suit a veteran technohead tea-time home listening.