Reviews 392: Alien D
Back in 2020, Alien D dropped a cassette that has become one of my favorites…the euphoria-inducing breakbeat, techno, and ambient jams of Sunday Painting, which was released by Lillerne Tapes. Since that time, Alien D—real name Daniel Creahan—has been steadily putting out a range of heady and hypnotic works: there were a couple of 12-inches on Budget Cuts and Fixed Rhythms, the digital Nature’s Pencil on 1432 R, and he collaborated again with Lillerne for Spiritual World (among the last releases on that amazing label, RIP). Then in 2025, Alien D released one of his most organic and expansive works yet with the For the Early Hours of a World In Bloom LP on Theory Therapy. Here, club focused rhythms underly extended explorations of dub techno dynamism and early hours ecstasy, with layers of texture and tonal color enhancing the constant sense of pulse and grooving motion.
Towards the end 2025, Alien D then went on to release a sort of companion to For The Early Hours…, which was born from leisure time spent on the Puglia coastline, and which took a hazier, more nostalgic and daydream approach to the dancefloor. The result was the Mediterranean Blue EP, released through Kulture Galerie’s Digital Artefacts tape series. This cassette uses the fantasy-esque settings of shimmering sea, shining sun, rocky sand, and clear blue sky as inspiration…along with musings on time, love and memory…for a concise set of aqueous ambient techno, Café del Mar-style chillout, and delirious dreamscape downtempo. And throughout the trip, immersive atmospherics of afterglow rave, paradise psychedelia, and cosmic futurism subsume the mix and surround rhythms that take in varied and vaporous breakbeat forms, as well as grooves associated with the more modern interpretations of the balearic beat.
Alien D - Mediterranean Blue EP (Kulture Galerie Presents Digital Artifacts, 2025) The opening track “UFO Love” features wavering wavefronts of iridescent synthesis, and voices discussing alien abduction, connections to angels, and heavenly love. Splashes of percussion are doused in delay, and balmy bass pulses signal a deep downtempo disco groove, which is accented by tropical synth smears and dubwise bongos, and which fades out almost as soon as it arrives. In “Celestial,” island drums sit below cave liquids as they fall into pools of neon, and a skip steppin’ beat anchors swells of bass, alongside more anxious tones of sanded subsonic skitter…the vibe somewhere between paranoid DnB and futuristic garage. Laser wave repetitions flow across the mix with a psychotropic effect as the background is suffused with layers of balearic warmth…these equatorial phrases on marimba or vibraphone bringing touches of island sunshine while infectious world drum textures pop amidst technoid tracers, rave colorations, and the ever present sounds of dripping liquids. Then during a climactic turn, a saxophone soars through the sky, riding sunrays towards an infinite expanse of wondrous blue. The A-side finishes with “Drip System,” which begins on spiritual chillout flows that merge into an oceanic miasma of mystical ambience. Looping techno percussion patterns float upon heady basslines that push massive columns of air, heavenly pianos repeat, and everything seems to throb, pulse, and breath…as if stoking anticipation for a drop…until jungle rhythm cut ups flash into the spectrum with currents of cosmic warmth, eventually bringing down a bomb of bottom heavy bass breaks. It’s all infused with a touch of junglist energy, and throughout, magical threads of astral trance ecstasy flow around descending starshine percolations…the whole thing a dreamscape of ambient ether grooving…slow, low, and supremely stoned out.
B-side opener “When You Hear the Bell” comes to life on further jungle breakbeat mayhem, with the entire mix flowing under echo chains, and spacing out into a horizontal headspace. The kick drums are massive…essentially city leveling…and they sit under morphing, mutating, and chopping tracer synths, and also under these subliminal and off beat liquid bass riffs. There are evocations of insectiform acid, and a syncopated start/stop rhythm flow that gives the track a world dub exotica feeling, with the levels of psychoactivation enhanced by delay modulations and temporal manipulations that careen through the mix. Melancholic rainfalls of dub techno synthesis fade through the transmuting temporal pulsations, and these almost martial-esque snare rolls rattle and roll out of the stereo field. Next comes “Little Thoughts” and spectrally morphing clouds of mist and haze creating a daydream glow. A voice is time-stretched into a slow syrupy drawl of unintelligible murmurations, and subearthen pulses shake the stereo field while abstract electro fx evoke alien shaker rhythms. Synthesized chord stabs of rainbow hiss and prismatic refraction dance around each other as rimshots and snare taps play off the bass, creating a bouncing rhythm and a dayglo drift feel, which at some point explodes in complexity…the snares bursting into wildly kinetic breakbeat patterns as the bass grows more physical…almost alive in its organic sense of motion. The result is a radiant and rapturous display of oceanic DnB, with soul-vibrating subsonics backing filtering and flying beat science, and surrounding layers of lullaby melodics built from sleepy-eyed space chords and swells of soft summer smolder. The tape closes with “Blue,” wherein infinite bubble strands ride unseen sea currents, and popping structures of sea glass float in an underwater utopia. Chime strands sparkle and pearlescent pads create mirage visions of deep sea oases until eventually, a big banging breakbeat enters…this blasted and burnt-out rhythmic jam with palm-muted riffs far in the distance adding a further feeling of psych-balearic bliss. The bulbous and banging groove slams on and on, as soulbalm soundscapes of serene chillout psychedelia swirl around…though everything feels just barely out of reach…these soft subliminal rave fx, sampled voices, squelch sequences, and colorations of cosmic wonderment that swim at the edges of the mix, entrancing the mind towards a state of euphoria while the broken beats keep a drugged out anchor to the progression of time and the dimensions of space.
(image from my personal copy)
