Artist: Ortus
Title: Ascendant / Refractions
Label: Plastica
By: Simon Jones | 22 November 2002
Tracklist:

• A: Ascendant
• B: Refractions

Ortus "Ascendant / Refractions"

Ortus are the production duo of Lewis Hopkin and Joe Hague who live in the beautiful county of Devon within the UK, running their own imprint Airgap Recordings, as well as writing material for Yoshitoshi under the guise of Airgap, as well as extending their discography with some nice remixes for Origin and Blu Yonder, refining their sound into a new direction, evidence of which can be found within these two tracks 'Ascendant' and 'Refractions'

'Ascendant' builds it's groove around a hard kicking percussion line as subtle building riffs rain over the soundscape before the vocal kicks in and things get a bit more twisted as dark feedback pushes the sounds back on themselves, techno influenced arrangements bringing the warm chords forward nicely in the middle before descending into mayhem at the end. Madness

'Refractions' starts off slowly, but soon weaves a path upwards, powerful riffs starting off growling away in the background and gradually increasing in intensity as the track progresses forward, climaxing in a deep break that takes us back down the other side. Moody progressive grooves at their finest, and worthy of much more than being a b-side.

No doubt we will hear much more from this duo on their own imprint and many others in '03, but for now check this out if you are a fan of their work.