Review

Championed by Mike Paradinas, who signed them to his Planet Mu label after hearing a few early demos, Dublin's Ambulance make IDM that sounds like it's being bounced around a fun house of mirrors. The Curse of Vale Do Lobo marks the duo's first full-length album, and sees them dive headfirst into the skewed melodies and buckling rhythms that marked their early sequence of EPs and 12s. With constantly changing melodic and rhythmic patterns, their debut is an intimidatingly slippery first listen, but unlike so much of the cluttered techno being made in this vein, repeated exposure reveals a sublimely organized chaos at its heart. Labyrinthine and immaculately detailed, Vale Do Lobo moves with disorienting restlessness through one expertly programmed sequence after another; opener "Tickle" boasts a hard electro backbone and a slanted, buzzing synth line, the eight-minute-long "Hymn" morphs from a shuffling drone piece into a bubbling mud pot of prickly analog synths and colliding rhythms, and the previously released "Antiques Roadshow" fuses a syncopated rhythm line with a yawning vocal sample. Admittedly obtuse, and with very little to speak for it in terms of accessibility, Vale Do Lobo isn't going to break any doors down, but heads will no doubt appreciate it for what it is -- a strikingly well-programmed techno head-trip with layers to get lost in.