Carsten Nicolai's latest Alva Noto full-length is the second part of his ongoing 'HYbr:ID' series, this time an icy cocktail of dubby atmospheres, elastic rhythms and gaseous textures made in response to Richard Siegal's 2021 dance performance 'ECTOPIA'.

Nicolai is nothing if not reliable. His last 'HYbr:ID' release was an expertly engineered score to Siegal's 'Oval', and this time he takes roughly the same approach, applying it to another Siegal performance. The album is a series of lengthy, introspective pieces, starting with 'Ectopia Environment', an almost beatless drift of frozen drones and digital water droplets that brings to mind the best parts of the early 12k catalogue, punctuated by dubby womps that wouldn't be out of place in the Chain Reaction canon. 'Ectopia Elastic 1' is more gripping, introducing Nicolai's familiar glitchy rhythms but not slipping into uniformity. Here, his rubbery glitches sound as if they're bouncing off the grid, offering a counterpoint to his glacial, uniform pads. He materializes in the middle of a gloomy cavern on 'Ectopia Quarks Minus', using Köner-esque rumbles to offset his processed foley crackles and precisely-placed glitches, and evokes the dub spirits again on 'Ectopia Removing Infinities', trapping pinprick beats in a wobbling mass of throbbing pads and sci-fi FX. The more rhythmic tracks pierce the album's solemn mood considerably: 'Ectopia Field 1' is a particular highlight, reminding of earlier, more vital Alva Noto recordings with its R&B kick and vibrating clicks and pops, and closing track 'Ectopia Gravitation' sounds almost like Emptyset, with saturated bass thuds and snare-like glitches rattling underneath windy white noise blasts.