SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: COLLABS 3000 (CHRIS LIEBING & SPEEDY J) – 2025 EP

COLLABS 3000 (CHRIS LIEBING & SPEEDY J)
2025 EP
NOVAMUTE (MUTE RECORDS)

Twenty years after the album Metalism, Collabs 3000 (Chris Liebing & Speedy J) return to the studio with four new tracks that are more continuation than reboot.
What stands out is how at home these tracks are alongside Metalism’s aesthetic. The EP features driving techno cut with delicate, almost crystalline details. You hear the duo’s long game: minimal components, maximized impact, and an aversion to trendy ornament.

Your ears may fixate on the micro, such as tiny swells, rust-flecked hi-hats, and ghosted tones, but even as the music drifts into abstraction, the tracks snap back to the dancefloor.

In “Spiegeling,” it’s the little melody you can barely hear in the background that gently pulses, setting up a pleasing tension‑and‑release matrix. “Zwart” drills with locomotive steadiness, the kind of tunnel‑vision focus that makes time elastic on a good system. “Strum” earns its title by using percussive string‑like flickers as atmosphere; it feels like the EP’s most suspended moment, adding air around the drum architecture without softening it. “Galude” is the most adventurous track, not veering away from techno but hinting that it could or perhaps it wants to. A more forward snare and passages that flirt with near‑rock drum phrasing let the track open up and breathe; the spine stays four‑to‑the‑floor but the shoulders loosen.

While time has not stood still in the 25 years since the Collabs 3000 project surfaced and the Metalism album arrived, 2025 EP sits comfortably beside that gem. Fresh sounds harken back to the old days; a pleasing leather‑worn patina shines through. If Metalism was forged from lathe, tool and die, the 2025 EP is the freshly milled part: same alloy, new tolerances, shaped by the duo’s resurrected chemistry.

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