Over five years on from his first appearance on the label with “Follow Me” off the “Dnepr_Vancouver 1.0” VA, Ukrainian don Stanislav Tolkachev resurfaces with his debut solo four-tracker for RYC. Not quite swerving from the sonic pathway his name has become synonymous with over the years, ever so alien and transporting, Tolkachev’s latest boasts the very exact qualities that have made his sound stand out from others, earning him a constantly growing crowd of heirs and imitators along the way.

Breaking the trip in, “Up The Steel Stairway” sets the tone for the EP without further ado. Sniping hails of steadily frantic, arpeggiated synth chords and puncturing kick drums that’ll have you dancing like one rolls with the punches, Tolkachev sails into the eye of the cyclone all guns blazing. Lacking no pounding heft either, “The Less You Know” slits a way open into your head through a carefully dissonant symbiosis of corrosive synth lines and octave-shifting bass gone astray. On-the-edge techno at its rowdiest, most mentally challenging.

Flip the coin and here comes the deranged, trouble-brewing “One More To Go”. Cranking the mind-bogglingness a notch further, this one bulldozers its way past all sanity thresholds without blinking. Final number “The Way To The After” tops it off in more straightforward but equally immersive fashion. Plunging us in a submerged chamber of sorts, where heavily verbed-out synth flexions entangle along tranquilly ascending pads, progressively dissolving in inert pools of FX-charged bleach and slo-dripping dub venom.