Halvtrak: Dust Under Bridges EP
Don't Be Afraid

The debut EP from Halvtrak finds the Finland producer riffing on Chicago house in a bold and exuberant manner in four five-minute tracks for Don't Be Afraid. Not much info is available about Halvtrak or his background, so we'll just have to make do with the tunes, which are a solid enough bunch.

The opening cut, “Finding Yourself,” works up a solid bounce in its tick-tock percussive rhythms and wiry synthesizer burblings. Halvtrak brings an imaginative twist to the tune in shifting away from its Chicago house-flavoured beginnings into something that in isolated moments resembles a glittering soul-funk throwdown. “A Thousand Years” adds a few more surprises to the set by threading into its jittery, acid-inflected strut traces of opium-scented flute and string melodies, while “Barracuda” (not a cover of the Heart classic) digs into some serious low-end rumble when it's not soaking itself in an acid bath of its own making.

If Halvtrak hardly rewrites any house or techno rule-books with Dust Under Bridges, the club-centric release certainly offers a credible enough riff on the genres, and the material's textural detail and multi-layered design show that the producer definitely has a flair for melody and track construction.

December 2013