Digital fires burn. A lonely flugelhorn blows in a blue distance. Mark Isham soundtracks and Michael Shrieve post-Santana. A Las Vegas tango led by a bleeding Romeo. A song of resignation. The end of something. Love?

Harry Dean Stanton crossing a desert back to the past. Dark was the night, cold was the ground. Yep, I know that feeling.

The beat of a forgotten record kicking against its prick. A finite looped. An infinite disintegrating. Dub bass and “Wicked Game” guitar arcs.

Fast forward further into Dub to Murcof`s fractured Classical, and Gak Sato`s spy themes, Schifrin tributes.

A piano dropped overboard, sinking, treasured memories passing on its journey to the bottom. Woo-esque in its recollections.

Pizzicato waves. The fireworks of sorrow. O`Rang rhythms and Dr Paterson interludes.

This is Techno if Nuel`s “Vibration” is Techno. A call, half muezzin, half siren gives flight to tales of heat and fatal missions, of an unwavering focus up river, to the heart.

Cinematic orchestras. Jansen, Barbieri, and Takemura`s “Children Gathering At The Lake”. A final fall into delay and surface noise. A foolish boat leaning, creaking and bowing to the weight. A field recording of something breaking, buckling under stress. Giving up, and giving out.

Translation / So What Does It Sound Like?

Downtempo Electronica. Kinda Post-Glitch, where the fascination with the microtonal components of sound and their manipulation has been taken to its logical conclusion, and into Dub`s delay. A “Techno” that can sit alongside Nuel`s “Trance Mutation”, although the pieces on “4” are short, not drawn out contemplations / meditations. Rather the whole album segues as such, as one continuous “story”. The percussion in places is almost orchestral and that, in this “Techno” setting, brings to mind Murcof`s “Martes”.

The more precise tracks, for me, are less memorable, “clever” has never been my thing, but those with the Flugelhorn, “Jan Mayen” and “Hirta” could be taken from Mark Isham soundtracks, and it should be clear by now that I have long been sold on the heartbreak that he is usually called to score.

Without the tether of a beat, any ties to dated genres / pigeonholes such as “Chillout” or “Trip Hop” are lost and as a consequence, this is easily Boozoo Bajou`s most assured production to date. Instead “4” inhabits a space more adult / serious and, importantly, modern, located between Classical and Industrial.

Only on the final track does the record fall into excess and indulgence, and perhaps even this works as a conclusion to the “story”, if not in the context of a “DJ” looking for music to play.