Variant - The Setting Sun
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Variant - The Setting Sun
Holdrons Arcade
135A Rye Lane
Unit 11 Holdrons Arcade
London SE15 4ST
United Kingdom
Label: Field Records – FIELD 40
Format: 2x12", Album, Remastered
Country: Netherlands
Released: Mar 27, 2026
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dub Techno, Ambient
Stephen Hitchell's The Setting Sun has long occupied a particular kind of cult status — a record that those who knew it spoke about in hushed terms, its CD-only origins keeping it from the wider audience it always deserved. Field Records have now corrected that. Released under Hitchell's Variant alias and originally issued on Echospace in 2009, this beautifully remastered 2x12" edition finally brings one of dub techno-adjacent ambient's modern classics to vinyl, and the format suits it completely.
The conditions of its making are inseparable from its character. Recorded using field recordings of storms in Berlin and train rides in Narita, outboard synths, samplers and analogue hardware — no computers — The Setting Sun radiates the physicality of its process. Looming chords rich with harmonic overtones, surface noise deployed as an expressive layer, subtle distortion fragments deepening the narrative across glacial, monumental pieces.
Dub techno is present throughout, but woven in with extraordinary restraint — the kick underpinning As Time Stood Still, metallic delay ripples shaping A Silent Storm, delicate rhythmic framing giving structure to Someplace Else — percussion always dissolving into atmosphere, leaving flickering tonal ghosts where drums might once have sat. In quieter moments like Adrift, the depth of detail becomes fully absorbing. A benchmark restoration, and essential.
