Photo courtesy of Warp Records

Aside from some soundtrack work, it’s been eight years since the last Plaid album. Eight long years. But the British IDM duo’s now returned with Scintilli, their sixth album in what’s been a long, and fruitful 20-year career of making simple blips sound beautiful and danceable. “We’re using far more virtual synthesis (less outboard) than previous recordings,” Plaid’s Andrew Turner tells Hive about Scintilli. “This offers far more modulation than analog equipment, which is also prohibitively expensive, allowing us to build subtle errors into the sounds which we feel gives them a more organic quality.”

Indeed, “Thank” hints at this organic fixation — it still retains the classic pulsating electro-grooves that hallmark Plaid’s early work hit your ears at first, where they move in and out of complimenting layers, that oddly starts to sound like they’re experimenting with with more “natural” sounding instruments from the far east. “‘Thank’ was written as a note of respect and appreciation to the pioneers of Techno music in Detroit,” Turner says. “It uses lots of FM synthesis, which echoes the original Detroit sound.” Welcome back.

Scintilli is out now on Warp Records.