In the eternal cycles of techno, there are certain stable zones, particular patterns that seem to work regardless of what micro- or macro-trends might be shifting around them. And Kevin McHugh - aka L4-4A, aka Ambivalent - seems to be, record-by-record, set-by-set, finding his way into one of those zones.

A list of the labels he's released on - Ovum, Cocoon, Mobilee, and Minus - suggests someone who might just be about the big room, about big and obvious mainstream techno gestures. But with each move he makes, and particular through his Delft and Valence labels, Ambivalent shows that he's about something a bit more subtle, a bit more timeless, a bit more about the real lost moments of the dancefloor than about lasers and huge crowds.

At the heart of it all is acid house, with its confidence in simplicity, and constant modulation preventing anything ever settling into locked-grooves or too-obvious riffing. In fact, this mix is light on the 303s and 101s compared to a lot of McHugh's sets recently, rather leaning towards the metallic chords of Detroit, but structurally and spiritually it remains acid to the core: even when it starts going hard it's completely dedicated to that classic body-trip hypnosis.

For all that it hits a timeless groove, though, this is 100% new and unreleased material... bar one unnamed track which is apparently an unearthed gem by an underground legend from 1997. Something about this gesture of seamlessly blending one little window to the past into fresh work by artists working on the club frontline now demonstrates perfectly what Ambivalent is about. In this 4am techno interzone, retro and future are no longer opposites...