Omit Tracer 2CD HMS 005 Paris Transatlantic December 2005 You go for a walk alone late one night in the deserted financial district of a big city, dead leaves and discarded newspapers blowing across your path as you gaze up at empty yet glaringly lit offices high above you, wondering who – if anyone – might still be up there at this ungodly hour. Somewhere, out of sight, a dog barks menacingly, but you can't hear it, because you're listening to Tracer, and it's the perfect soundtrack to your nocturnal wanderings in this land of blank, impersonal ones and zeros. Imagine a cross between the post-industrial desolation of pre-Industrial Chris Carter – The Space Between – and the cold green reveries of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, with disembodied voices intoning security clearance codes, PIN numbers, names and addresses of faceless financial institutions, mantra-like, over gloomy minor synth drones and bare, crunchy rhythm loops. The work of Omit – aka Clinton Williams, who lives in the sleepy farming town of Blenheim, New Zealand (about as far as you can get from where you're out walking tonight) – belongs on your shelves alongside other fabled New Zealand dronemeisters Birchville Cat Motel, Eso Steel and Peter Wright. Tracer, originally released as a CDR on SySecular, joins but a handful of Omit releases that have surfaced outside of limited edition lathe-cut singles and hand-dubbed cassettes (notably Deformed, with Dust – aka Bruce Russell – on Corpus Hermeticum, and Rejector, on Anomalous). The music's cold electro sense of foreboding is far from inhuman, though; in fact, it's all too human – as human as the chill you feel in the pit of your stomach when waiting for the last subway as the man at the other end of the platform turns and starts to come purposefully towards you. But maybe he's listening to Tracer too – if he isn't, he certainly should be.–Dan Warburton