Imagine going to a club with damp leaves underfoot, raindrops falling gently from branches stretching high overhead, and all kinds of animal life creeping and flitting barely seen through the undergrowth. Welcome to the soundworld Desert Sky creates on ‘Rare Consistence’, the A-side to this new EP on Assemble Music: a journey deep into a living, breathing rainforest. Come for this endlessly rich and evocative take on minimal house soundscapes, but stay for the moment 7 minutes in when, with a wash of Detroit pads, a shaft of brilliant sunlight penetrates the canopy, helping to illuminate the surroundings in all their complexity. Desert Sky also achieves the balance always displayed on this label by offsetting the organic variety of the A-side with ‘Pull Down Your Mask’, a steely, focussed B-side that demonstrates the single-minded approach that keeps those mid-2000s Perlon tools so relevant today. This is precision-charged dance music deployed in a darker, closer manner, tearing you out of nature and thrusting you into the cold machine world of function and automation. So which will it be – life, or death? Trust Desert Sky and Assemble Music to make both options seem equally fascinating.