The music of PotatoFinger thrusts the listener back to those halcyon days of the '90s when drum and bass was wildly mutating every month and when IDM could seemingly go anywhere and do anything with flamboyant braininess and rhythmic legerdemain. This Seattle producer (real name: Eli Hetrick) came to the attention of Bonkers! promoter Ian Scot Price (aka the Naturebot, Data Breaker's January 22 subject). Price began hyping PotatoFinger every time we'd see each other at a club—and, against the odds, PotatoFinger lives up to the hype.

On Futzing (Pleasure Boat: pleasure boatrecords.com), PotatoFinger flaunts a freewheeling imagination and a predilection for the unpredictable. The 12 tracks here range from Luke Vibert–esque library-music worship ("Mocking the Miser") to evil, No U Turn–style drum and bass ("Bumbling Steel") to Cinematic Orchestra's ornate jazz funk ("Meaning?") to fleet dubstep ("Facial Body Remover") to orchestral abstract electronica ("Attempts at Evolution")—and more. "Szzasm Slice" warps a Joe Cocker sample (gotta be "Woman to Woman") into Si Begg–like electro-funk, while "Spiral Fabric" does jagged, rapturous things with melodramatic female vocals, acoustic guitars, and hand claps. "Sleep.Dream.Wake" closes the album with a valedictorian flourish, all spazzcore breakbeats and swelling yet muted orchestration. Somebody notify Mike "µ-Ziq" Paradinas.

On iTunes, Futzing is classified as "Mutation," but the title (and components) of one track, "Pixilated Mayhem," may be an even better descriptor. Don't ever stop changing, PotatoFinger.

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Intrusion's The Seduction of Silence (Echospace: echospacedetroit.com), by contrast, is not at all pixilated or suggestive of mayhem. The project of Chicago's Stephen Hitchell (Echospace, Soultek), Intrusion is dub with most of the Jamaica drained from it, techno with most of the jittery oont-siss excised. In other words, The Seduction of Silence embraces that cavernous frostiness pioneered by Basic Channel (yep, those guys again). With Paul St. Hilaire (formerly Tikiman) chipping in loved-up vocals on two cuts, Silence succeeds as a well-cushioned sojourn into dub techno's chillest outposts. Echospace, indeed.

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Claro Intelecto's Warehouse Sessions (Modern Love: modern-love.co.uk) collects five 12-inches plus one bonus cut from Manchester's Mark Stewart (not the Pop Group/Maffia frontman). Over these 11 tracks, Claro Inelecto purveys a sinewy minimal techno that fills the club with paranoia and hip-twitching rhythms. It's hard to imagine dancers raising their hands to Warehouse Sessions—unless it's to shield themselves from foreboding phantoms. Tracks like "Instinct," "Hunt You Down," "Signals," and "Trial and Error" proceed with a stoic grandeur, a midnight blue magnificence. What sort of venue would welcome this stark, stoic dance music? It seems tailored for former Soviet republic citizens whose smiling muscles have atrophied. So, highly recommended. recommended

PotatoFinger's CD-release party with M'Chateau, MC Anton Bomb, Citizen Mori, Erictronic, and Ya No Mas, Fri Feb 13, Re-bar, 10 pm–3 am, $5 before 11 pm/$7 after, 21+.