The second release for Substractif, the headphone/deep-listening subsidiary of the Canadian avant-garde label Alien 8, couldn't have set the roster up better. Tomas Jirku's Immaterial looks to the near imperceptible for inspiration. Though not widely recognized, Jirku's recording career has neatly suggested that he would soon release a genre-defining set.

Having worked out his M.O. on the MP3 site NoType, Jirku released his sophomore album, last year's Variants, for Alien 8. That album collected a month's worth of clicks, pop, and righteous dub rhythms. The step from the suggestive Variants to the blatant club styles of his next release, Sequins, was a easy one. Sequins, released on the doyen of the click dance scene, Force Inc, ensured that Jirku would be admired in the same light as Mathias Schaffhäuser, Wolfgang Voigt, and Thomas Brinkmann. While it's true that none of the nine Sequins tracks would make it into Sasha and Digweed's sets, I'd not be baffled to find one in Andrew Weatherall's challenging selections.

Immaterial shies away from maximum club exposure, though those mechanics are detectable. Four lengthy tracks named after subatomic particles begin the electron haze with Jirku slowly introducing classic Chain Reaction dub elements into the space. The signature tinkles, pops, and curved white noise are all abundant. Jirku maintains such immense control of these vaporous elements that his music seems to halt the flow of time, as only the finest dub can.

With such discreet and attentive sounds as these, every reaction is going to be unique. To me, Jirku is investigating the Brownian motion of dust settling or how things come out in the wash. Immaterial is fixated on these processes. Jirku puts forth little effort to make each of the four tracks distinctive, and in fact, by using the sound of running water as a segue between each, he compels the listener to treat each track as part of a greater whole. In this regard, Jirku allies himself directly with Vladislav Delay, the Finnish minimal master, whose 2000 release, Anima, was a sixty-five minute exploration of minimal rhythm on Mille Plateaux, Force Inc's even more experimental parent label.

Like Anima, Immaterial can be extremely demanding if the listener is intent on attending to each detail. While hardly an intellectual response, I've found that I've best appreciated the record by contradicting its demanding nature and treating it as an inconsequential environment. Immaterial transcends the piquant ambiguity of its title. However playfully Jirku tempts me to write this record off as inconsequential fluff, the album has a nebulous, evanescent beauty that keeps luring me back into its gaseous extent.

-Paul Cooper, November 8th, 2001