‘Battle of Cannae is a dubby roller filled with crisp percussion and meditative warmth. Next up, Battle of Carrhae is a deep 120bpm bass groover with detailed percussion and rich textures that tie the first side together beautifully. On the flip, Stolen Land, a collaboration with Melbourne heavyweight Pugilist, takes things into club territory. Spacious, weighty and rhythmically twisted, filled with polyrhythmic grooves, a few wubs, and gritty percussive drive. Strap in. To close, Battle of Edessa pushes the tempo to 160bpm — a sharp, hypnotic finisher that shows why Big Hands continues to stand out as one of the most exciting producers doing it right now.’

‘Conceived by Andrea Ottomani in detailed dreams during consecutive nights in late June 2024, whilst traversing a stormy Mediterranean between stops in Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Turkey.
‘The musical mood is longing, melancholic, nostalgic — a kind of saudade, sorrowing with the sense that what is past or lost can never be recovered — but filled with regenerative wonder, or ‘thauma’. Evocative field recordings of the sea, cicadas, calls to prayer and general ambience merge with bells, balafon, and various percussion instruments, seamlessly combining with synths and electronics. To complete the picture, a compelling succession of instrumental and vocal contributions: for a taste check Bint Mbareh’s wailing counterpoint to the brass, in Fuoco Lento, and her spine-tingling verses in A Juniper Tree Whose Roots Are Made of Fire; the snake-charmer waltzes in Sticks And Stones; and the spiritually charged interplay between saxophone and bamboo drum, in Rinascita.’