PETRE INSPIRESCU Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Petre Inspirescu comes through to NYC's DisDat with a sly 3-tracker detailing only the slinkiest minimal dub, the techy dance equivalent of Slinky Malinky. Operating only at night, viallike metal clanks and ominous bass booms scour the ambient wastes of 'Foc', the track's name mirroring the utterance we find jumping from our mouths on first listen. 'Si' is comparatively peaceful, while 'Para' is a dubbed-out modular afterthought; all three tracks nail an intense backend of sound, not easily achieved under normal circumstances.

Review: Coming off the back of two albums for Japan's Mule Musiq, Petre Inspirescu drops a new single for the imprint, taking his iconic brand of dancefloor minimalism to a wider, perhaps less tech-savvy audience. That's not to say that Mule isn't a home to some of the most exciting electronic beats around, but Inspirescu's style takes the catalogue onto a much darker path. "Murgulll" is headstrong and groove-heavy, coming through with an interlocked cocktail of sounds that mould to create an endless atmosphere of euphoric doom; "Cumva" is the dubbier of the two, launching a deep-minded bass missile that morphs into something more improvisational and more akin to the previous material that has graced this sublime label.

Review: Back in 2015, Petre Inspirescu popped up on Mule Musiq with Vin Pholie, an album considered a significant departure from his previous work. While he made his name with club-ready, heavily textured takes on tech-house and minimal techno, Vin Pholie saw him work with piano, strings and woodwind instruments for the first time, resulting in a set that sat somewhere between ambient and neo-classical. Vintul Prin Salcii, his belated follow-up, explores similar sonic territory, adding in vintage synthesizers and occasional nods to dub techno - see the becalmed pulse of "Miroslav 3" - to slightly broaden the approach. The result is a melodious sequence of musical movements that also doffs a sly wink to krautrock synthesizer pioneers as well as classical composers, American minimalists and ambient legends.

Review: Petre Inspirescu has previously delivered two decidedly atmospheric albums, both of which neatly join the dots between minimal techno and hypnotic, ultra-deep house. With Vin Ploile, he's flipped the script slightly. While still dreamy, atmospheric and stripped back, the album's nine tracks are mostly crafted from his own recordings of live instrumentation - piano, strings, wind instruments - which have then been altered and manipulated in the computer. The resultant music is loose, dreamy, exotic, unusual and hugely enjoyable, feeling a little like an inventive fusion of ambient, deep house, techno, jazz and Reich/Riley style American minimalism. Whether it's the Romanian's best album is debatable, but it's certainly his most imaginative.

Review: Following the increasing trend in Romanian minimal techno for slickly broken rhythms, scene veteran Petre Inspirescu serves up a deadly slice of sharp beats and weighty bass reverberations on this new EP for Amphibia. "La Doi Pasi" is a snappy little number, letting the crystalline breakbeat move at an athletic pace while the bass gleefully wobbles around at rhythmical odds with the rest of the track. Keeping things equally stripped down but more techy on the B side, "Basso Ostinato" lets more of that oddball sampling into the mix for a hypnotic work out that will appeal to all lovers of Inspirescu's existing back catalogue.