John Beltran: Ten Days Of Blue Vinyl 2LP on Sale

“I was tired of the clubs and loud sound systems. I was in to some odd stuff at the time too. Enya, Kitaro, Julio Iglesias, Yanni, Deep Forest. I went real soft for a minute. I eventually got back into Detroit Techno with a twist though.” Lansing, Michigan producer John Beltran’s second album under his government name, originally released in 1996. Apart from the alienware B-more of opening number “Flex,” there’s only a small handful of beat tracks here, with the bulk of the album reserved for rolling arpeggios and Reich-grade synthesizer counterpoints, echoing aspects of B12’s anglo-cyborg sonics and the hi-tech romance of Carl Craig. The heavy-footed shuffle of “Venim And Wonder” recalls some of Mark Bell’s (rip) post-LFO interstellar junkyard tekno, but there isn’t much else out there that sounds quite like this, especially the more sublime passages. Beltran exhibited these sort of new age-inspired melodies on tracks like “Blue World” and “Nitric” from his previous album, but here he strips away any tells that might place him in the techno class of ’96, rendering Ten Days Of Blue (for the most part) timeless. Acutely rhythmic but mostly evading beats, and way too deserving of your undivided attention to be considered ‘ambient’… if you were looking for something to get you through the season change and make you feel alive again, you’ve found it. Watch out for “Soft Summer,” “December’s Tragedy” (aka my parents’ nickname for me as a kid), the meditative “Collage Of Dreams,” the eye-watering “Gutaris Breeze (6000km to Amsterdam),” and the sweeping title track. Highly recommended.