As the temperature plummets and the winds get more vicious, a new Luke Abbott EP is a welcome winter warmer

Granted, Abbott’s keening electronica has its furtive traits, but his melodic sensibility and ear for gentle melancholia can be relied upon to get cheeks flushing. Earlier this year, Gold Panda’s Notown label issued the lovely Modern Driveway EP, which showed Abbott sounding in real command of his sound.

The producer returns to Notown once again next month with new EP Object Is A Navigator, a record described as hiding a beating heart of twisted melody”. FACT have the first play of the EP’s title track, and the emphasis is definitely on the ‘twisted’ rather than the ‘melody’.

‘Object Is A Navigator’ is a pointillist delight, a collage of ultra-precise synth lines and pinprick drum programming. Rather like the front cover (which resembles a funky petri dish), there’s a real sense of momentum building throughout the track, as if individual elements are dividing and multiplying as time passes. There’s also one of those windswept breakdowns that Abbott’s former home Border Community do so well (cf James Holden’s remix of Nathan Fake’s ‘The Sky Was Pink’), and a scuzzy coda to boot.

Object Is A Navigator is due on December 10. Note: if this sort of thing some glow back in your cheeks, we’d advise checking out Nathan Fake’s current FACT mix.