Redstone Press uncorks another anomaly with the latest offering from First Epoque – The Antonelli Scrolls; an expansive four-track EP of riddled percussive tension and mythic resonance. A relic from an unknown era, like finding a USB stick inside a fossil. Precision-tooled dread, dubbed through unknowable years.
“To The Sea” opens like an ancient machine rebooting underwater — initiated by tidal sub-pressure and log-drum basslines, while rusted pads coalesce like liquid metal in the water. Each sound feels scrubbed of excess, chiselled to bone. It’s ritualistic techno, stripped back and hollowed out, possessed by half-remembered visions of Atlantis.
“Al-Tarif” follows with sharpened urgency — syncopated low-end funk coiled inside a lattice of unstable percussion. An encrypted script traced in stuttering kicks, cavernous bass drops and vapour-trailed synths; its structure feels less composed than summoned. The rhythm moves like a ritual procession: reverent and deliberate. Each percussive accent lands like a glyph etched into ancient stone.
“WRONGMANOEUVRE” — a misstep in the timeline, or a doorway left ajar. The track opens in disarray: detuned pads flicker like emergency lighting in a decompression chamber, while subaquatic kick-drums stutter and buckle under their own weight. The groove is broken but determined, dragging itself forward with a sense of mechanical dread.
Final transmission “Époque No. 25” hits like a rupture in the temple wall — a burst of high-velocity techno carved from scorched circuitry and panic-coded rhythm. It barrels upwards with relentless thrust. There’s no refuge here — only pursuit, propulsion. An overwhelming sense that something unknowable is closing in.
There’s no overt genre allegiance on The Antonelli Scrolls — just the steady unravelling of linear time. One for the initiates. Not easily explained. Not meant to be.
