Optimal — Rolling Stock

Here’s a smartly presented CDR in a printed card wallet, with both front and back covers depicting a bridge across water. The label spiel says that although it was established to reissue archival recordings, it has released Rolling Stock, recorded 2023-2024, since it revisits the late 1990s as a ’well crafted homage to DHR releases and ambient breakcore/jungle playlists from the 90’s’. The album is a compilation of tracks taken from three digital EPs.

Optimal does indeed push that DHR/breakcore sound: nearly all of the tracks are full of insistent, rushing, rattling snares; sometimes these are straight, sometimes they’re blurred with effects, like the modulated snares on ‘Chemical Warfare’. ‘Get Paranoid’ has these offbeat snares that are equally unsettling, irritating, and intriguing - they immediately grab the ear as something ‘wrong’ but then become the central attraction. The album does present quite a restricted palette of sounds, which could be boiled down very reductively to: snares, bass (beats and tones), ambient sounds, and a few vocal samples. We’ve dealt with the snares; the bass is low and strong, but more insistent or regular than the ‘dive-bomb’ approach of some jungle/d’n’b, sometimes this is empowering and pummelling, but it does remove a lot of space from the sound field. What space there is, is generated by the ambient or droney sounds that sometimes act as background tones, and sometimes present the melodic drive; ‘No Future Yes Past’ has nice breathy tones, ‘Chemical Warfare’ has effective, haunting ambient drones, which fight with the buzzing snares to some extent but also make it a compelling track, whilst ‘Rolling Stock’ has ambient tones that feel like they’re being pushed into the red. Beyond this there are three pieces which lean more towards the ambient side of things: ‘Wasteland’ is a short ambient interlude, ‘Please Let Me Sleep’ is a drone track that sounds wonky and and malfunctioning, and digital - the sounds aren’t smooth, they’re roughened and despite this not being something I generally like here it really works, lastly, ‘5AM’ sounds like it’s channelling Burial vibes, though without really sounding like Burial. The vocals are sometimes obviously samples, and sometimes unclear as to whether they’re live performances; but it’s really only on ‘Snare Buzz’ where they are mangled that they truly stand out.

If there is an obvious failing with Rolling Stock, it’s that it doesn’t really hang together as an album, it’s a compilation of previously released tracks and as such it struggles to create an overall arch or narrative. Similarly, there isn’t too much deviation from a fairly limited sound and sound palette, which gives it a focus but also means that several of the tracks feel interchangeable; again, released as the original EPs this would have been less of an issue. However, it really does nail that manic DHR thing in places, and also nails some nice ambient work - it just sticks them together for the listener to make sense of. ‘Take Care of The Machine’ is perhaps the most effective track, with big bass and aggressive, hurtling snares, but I think the entire album will appeal to its audience