If there’s one constant for the UK’s Wisdom Teeth label, it’s evolution. Perhaps that’s fitting, given that its name implies growth and maturation. Since it was founded, just a little over a decade ago, Wisdom Teeth has traversed a gamut of styles, moving as steadily as the progress bar crawling across the waveform of a DJ mix. Early experiments in dubstep gave way to unorthodox bass music and leftfield techno; successive compilations have been dedicated to narrowly bounded experiments in the wiggly terrain around 100 BPM or the quick-stepping possibilities of the 150-170 zone.
Wisdom Teeth cofounder K-LONE, on the other hand, is a model of consistency. On both his albums so far, 2020’s Cape Cira and 2023’s Swells, the producer (aka Josiah Gladwell) has chipped away at a modest set of sounds with the dedication of a sculptor hunched over a milky block of marble. He likes his synths luminous and his drums razor sharp. His harmonic elements, though electronic, tend to have a suggestively physical heft, reminiscent of struck mallets and wheezing organs. His percussion, on the other hand, is unusually unassuming, at least compared to most contemporary dance music, implying not so much the force of drumsticks as the light glancing off a burnished hi-hat.
His new album sorry i thought you were someone else is of a piece with his previous two LPs—supersaturated with color and driven by finely honed drums. But even without making any major stylistic leaps from his previous work, it’s the most satisfying record of his career so far. His textures are softer and more enveloping than ever, and his emotional range has expanded beyond his previous albums’ demure glow.
The record’s lushness might at first seem surprising, given that Wisdom Teeth’s most recent compilation was dedicated to minimal techno, and K-LONE has been talking up his love of minimal in interviews. (It’s worth noting that the album appears on New York’s Incienso, whose co-founder, Anthony Naples, recently offered his own contribution to the minimal revival.) But peer beneath those billowing pads and the deceptively streamlined nature of K-LONE’s album becomes clear. Tracks are built on the barest boom-ticking drum patterns; basslines operate by dint of suggestion, sketching out a few sternum-tapping notes before plunging back below the limit of audibility. But every element is carefully polished and set in ways that mask the subdued movements of his jewel-toned clockworks.
