Pub / Summer / Ampoule

Back in 2000, “Summer” was Glaswegian artist Pub’s sophomore single. Released on London label Vertical Form, he joined a roster that included innovative electronica names such as Arovane, Corker / Conboy and Pan*American. A 16-minute mixing desk meditation, the track was a diaphanous cloud of treated clicking and clacking. Its bottom-end booming like a mother’s heartbeat, heard from within the womb. A warm, relaxing, reassuring drift, deeply textured with lightly dancing details and diffuse shape-shifting melodies. Its ambience evolving, a little Orb-like, through flickering fractal frequencies, rising and falling, constantly changing, retaining the listener’s attention. The mix containing, maybe, the suggestions at least, of multiple, muted, manipulated field recordings. The results, molten, liquid. Honey-ed. Quickly gaining the status of a downtempo, dub techno classic, “Summer” was subsequently sought-after, and bootlegged 9 years later. The demand, however, never went away, and…