The mysterious Ivan Pavlov returns with another release as COH on the scarily on point EDITIONS MEGO. This second go around with perhaps interesting electronic music’s greatest label is called RETRO-2038. It comes in the wake of the last COH record, the mesmerizing IIRON, which smashed me in the face never letting me forget it’s melding of rock and electronic music making approaches. RETRO-2038 is a purely electronic concoction, full of drones, and glitchy melodies, bubbling synth lines and pulsing, often beatless electronica. Pavlov works out of Sweden and this complex record marks his first recording since the aforementioned IIRON in 2011. COH plumbs a depth in electronic music that few seem able to grasp. Deep, dank minimalistic pulsing simmers throughout the course of a track like “Vainio”, while a track like “Bugs Builds A House” offers up a much more melodic and playful excursion (though not without noisy experimental tangents). The track certainly evokes its title conjuring a mechanical, workman like feeling that would pair well with images of a colony of insects plugging away, unthinking, born to be a cog in the machinery of life. And those are just two facets of the electronic spectrum that Pavlov explores. His sound world is a dense one, seemingly unbound by genre. With this awesome release COH remains one of my favorite contemporary electronic music artists and explorers. I’ll be listening to this one for a while.