Dub techno’s resurfacing in the last couple of years has been a welcome counterpoint to the over-the-top arpeggios of the decade-plus “progressive” house stranglehold on most dancefloors and the as-of-late DOA minimal techno scene.  The life imbued between sparse beats and foggy atmospherics is a refreshing throwback to a time when producers were artists first and businessmen as a last resort.  Given the niche aspect of the genre and the near-zero commercial viability of the sound, both artists and label heads are given the freedom to put an appreciation of the craft first.

Fatih Tuter is one of the newest of the new breed of producers focusing on this sound.  As Dubatech and Cold Form, he’s appeared on such leading netlabels as Cism and Deepindub, and his inclusion on this year’s Selected Moments II compilation from Shoreless undoubtedly served as a much-needed introduction to a bigger audience.

Wide & Shallow, also out on Shoreless in cd-r format, posits Tuter in a similar frame as his compilation companions.  The frozen-glass pads and resigned melancholia of Bvdub;  the simple but structural drum work of Quantec and the more restrained moments of Brendan Moeller;  the high-cloud ambient atmosphere of Anders Peterson’s Relapxych are all available reference points.

Tuter thankfully does not rest on influence or groupthink to distinguish himself.  Given the opportunity to stretch almost an hour out over seven untitled tracks, the producer chooses the artist’s high road , painting strokes of muted dawns on the grayscale dub techno canvas.  While Echospace‘s The Coldest Season may be the template for a night lost in a wasteland of tundra, Tuter here provides the dim glow of home just visible through the treeline.

The moments of motion on Wide & Shallow, as evidenced on “Untitled #3″, are generally solitary in their composure, bringing to mind more a sense of introversion and inner-space exploration than hand-holding companionship or crowded-room comraderie.  With an emphasis on restraint and subtlety, the listener strains to the point of exertion to understand, and, in the last moment, falls exhausted into audio-kinetic euphoria.

While there is more than enough dub techno capable of putting a dancefloor through its paces, it is the restrained subtleties on tracks like “Untitled #4″ and “Untitled #6″ that lift Wide & Shallow.  Beatless and coming in at just over four minutes, the shifting, echoing pads and steambath pulses give “#6″ an opportunity to lighten the mood without forcing a physical hand.  “Untitled #7″ returns to gauzy chords and a slow-motion bassline initially, all the while building over its eight minutes with each passage through the loop cycle into something of a final flight through the aurora.

Tuter, in all his guises, is a name to watch, as is Shoreless.  With the furtherance of bass culture’s cross-genre pollinations, an understanding and appreciation of how to use works like Wide & Shallow in both static and ecstatic environments should become less of a specialist notion.  Discerning selectors looking for atmosphere on that third or fourth deck in the mix have known this for quite some time.  It will be continued releases like Wide & Shallow that guide a return to the end of the night, instead of the standard closing-time crash and burn.