“100 Fold,” the leadoff track on this sophomore EP from DJ/producer Caleb Halter (a.k.a. Feral) begins with a soothing keyboard fade-in that lasts all of 20 seconds before Halter interrupts it with rolling layers of abrasion. First comes a supremely fat bass note, then a jarring touch of glitch, followed by a pitch-shifted four-note hook that sounds like a digitized blend of human vocals and wood flutes. If you’ve set foot anywhere near a dance floor in the past, oh, 15 years or so, you instinctively expect a tune like this to unfold with a bass drop followed by a forceful groove based on the hook, with some whiplash-inducing glitch thrown in for good measure.
In a club setting, Halter could’ve easily ridden that stereotype into a repetitive trance. But the bass drop and groove never arrive. Instead, Halter teases at both while “100 Fold” froths with atmospheres that threaten to reclaim the spotlight. After a minute and a half, the music simply fades away, but in that space Halter establishes the central dynamic at the core of the five tunes that comprise this EP: From start to finish, he keeps one foot in an ambient headspace and another in the ear-rattling clamor of the club.
On Feral’s first EP, last year’s Relay, as well as on his contributions to comps by Ghostly and Lucky Me, Halter appeared to be searching for a comfortable medium between those two modes. On this new material, he sounds restless and focused on sonic opposition as much as balance. If you like the element of surprise—or if you enjoy hearing boisterous dance-floor gestures through headphones and, in reverse, gauzy ambient nuance at loud volumes—Nexus keeps in perpetual flux, never quite resting in one world or the other.
Nexus also demonstrates Halter’s deliberate attention to timing. After he leaves you pining for a beat at the abrupt conclusion of “100 Fold,” he delivers on the remaining four songs, all of which are either anchored by strong beats (“Hyphen,” “We Feel You”), arrangements that suggest them even without any percussion (“Sum”), or a combination of both (“Wasp”). In all four cases, though, Halter continuously throws curveballs, some more subtle than others. “Wasp” starts off with a digital frost-like coating of atmosphere that appears to be heading straight for ambient territory, which makes the sudden onset of brash 808 pomp feel almost rude. From this point onwards, Halter allows the grooves to establish themselves enough to bob your head or move your body to them. However if you actually try to dance to this music, you’ll be presented with challenges.
In the middle of “Wasp” there’s a section where the groove drops out and the music just hovers, suspended, before it’s clear where things are going to go next. Meanwhile, when he captures the ham-fisted bombast of drum‘n’bass and glitch on “Hyphen,” for example, one gets the sense that some of his choices verge on satire. (“Nexus” is also the name of a software plug-in that Halter describes as dated and cheesy.) It takes attentive listening to notice that Halter often undercuts his gaudier sounds with finer details.
Nexus ends with “We Feel You,” a track whose triumphant overtones and skittering rhythm recall Middle* of Nowhere*-era Orbital. It sounds like the fabricated optimism of a closing credits sequence to a Hollywood blockbuster. But when you compare it to the more overtly uplifting “Ceremony,” the tune that closes Relay, it’s clear that Halter is moving away from emotional directness and into more guileful self-presentation. At times, Nexus appears to overstate what it is, only to leave you questioning whether you've properly read or even misread its intentions. Given Halter’s sense of precision, the push-pull of his music is both intentional and very rewarding.