Afterglow

Thankfully, Martin Wheeler has stopped making melodic yet super-clean electro. ‘Afterglow’ sees the UK producer go back to his roots, visually and musically: the Manga illustrations are gone, replaced by a six-year-old Wheeler and friends on the cover, while some of the music has been recycled from the producer’s first studio sessions back in the late ‘80s. It means that ‘Endless Summer’ and the epic ‘A Field’ have an organic pre-software sound, while the lullaby-like ‘Hush Now’ and influences from Warp’s ‘intelligent techno’ releases only reinforce the overall feeling of innocence lost.