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Jon Gaiser was never going to produce anything less than an exceptionally well polished debut album. Of course as a fully paid up and tied down member of the Minus family, you'd be mad to expect much deviation off the minimal-brick road, but to be frank, if you're going to keep making this sort of music, then better it's done outstandingly well. And obviously, coming from Hawtin's studio stable, it couldn't just be a set of 14 similar sounding tracks with a pretty cover either.

If you can make sense of the myriad of release formats and patterns, the basic structure is that all tracks are first created into an hour and 5 minute live style mix reflecting the Gaiser performance set, before being broken down and packaged in various combinations with bonus digital or vinyl remix curve-balls thrown in for good measure. You can certainly see what the Minus office were up to when they took their 10 weeks off at the beginning of the year.

As a live set the track listing is laid out perfectly. 'Volve' is a dark, eerie 4 min long intro, designed to drive your average lighting technician into a smoke machine frenzy, but little else. 'Ground' gently lowers the listener into the minimal pit with some quirky bleeps and a reassuring baseline, and the rest of the album is familiar territory.

Previously released dance floor killer 'Trunkated' finds a welcome spot towards the end and other highlights such as the sublimely smooth and optimistic 'Descending Order' lift the mood of the mix, which at times does dangle dangerously near the dark side. There's some seriously heavy atmospheric pieces, most notably 'Comma, Fade' itself and 'Substance B' which is rolling out-of-control percussive whirlwind which would probably send listeners reaching for substances if one wasn't already suitably stupefied by that point.

Coming to this album at the end of a summer which returned to house music with open arms and joyous vocals could be a risk. Certainly if you're looking for the strains of melody or the faint whiffs of house baselines that have infused themselves with increasing regularity into every other minimal track this summer, then don't come looking here. For slick timing, incredible detail to the most minute of sounds and rousing moody techno, then it'd be hard to find a better representation of the Minus sound than on this long player.

Artist: GAISER Title: BLANK FADE Label: MINUS Release Date: NOVEMBER 17th, 2008 Tracklist 01. Volve 02. Face Down 03. Ground 04. Ciliate With 05. Whether Or Not 06. Substance B 07. Comma, Fade 08. Leave It 09. Trunkated 10. Descending Order 11. One After 12. Outline www.m-nus.com  - www.myspace.com/jongaiser