Grant Deane - A Coruscating Hope (2025)

} From A Coruscating Hope's very first sputters of tapping percussion and crackling texture - Skegness, England based producer Dean Grant Collier, known as Grant Deane, weaves a web of hypnotic and mysterious dichotomy. It is a record draped in haze - both cloaked in nuanced and cloudy tones and somehow equally as illuminating and vivid. As the pieces gently unfurl there is a sense of wandering through the fantastic, though at 8 tracks and 46 minutes it is hardly a meander - nor is it brisk. A Coruscating Hope is ostensibly a minimal techno record, albeit one that lurches forward through muted IDM kissed soundscapes; but, it is brimming with life and motion. Taking inspiration from the minutiae of complex emotional scapes as well as brutalist architecture, Grant Deane's shimmering productions map out an inner journey - a view from a train merging with the commuting occupants' reflections.

}} A Coruscating Hope's tracks are meditations - tone poems where snippets of vocals and carefully assembled snaking synths wind beguilingly around jagged percussion interjections on liquid grooves. At times such as in "The Surfacing Dawn", "Potential Energy" and say "Stuff Falling" the effect is a warm lull of synaptic agreement, chugging along with grace and poise. At others such as on "With Less of a Jolt Than We Were Braced For" and "Forever Wanting To Be Over There" the effect is more unstable, with dissonant tones mounting and swirling around the groove in a deftly manoeuvred balancing act - one in which the titles themselves give clever hints as to what is causing the mischief - whether they be implied anxiety or yearning. In this way the record feels intensely personal, concise and yet expansive, moody and yet optimistic.

}}} A Coruscating Hope, it might therefore be said, is a record poised at the crossroads of listening environment applications: there are a few moments for the adventurous dancefloor to be sure, but much of the record truly lies in a hypnagogic inner space...a soundtrack for contemplative rumination and self discovery.