Simon Mann and Nae:Tek Unite on Meditative Two-Track Release Trip

The pairing of Sydney-based Simon Mann and London-resident Nae:Tek has already produced at least one slow-burn collab on Superordinate Dub Waves, the nine-minute "Rotation" from April 2025. Their new two-tracker, Trip, released March 27, 2026, shows the working relationship deepening, with both cuts pushing further into meditative dub-minimal territory rather than pivoting toward anything more immediately functional.

The chemistry between the two makes sense on paper. Mann's catalogue spans deep-techno, dub-techno and ambient electronica out of Darug Land in Australia, a body of work oriented toward spatial weight and textural patience. Nae:Tek, who describes his sound as deep-dub-techno and has curated the Superordinate Dub Waves catalogue since 2015, brings the structural discipline of someone who programs these kinds of tracks as a DJ rather than just producing them. When those two sensibilities converge, the result is tracks that know how to occupy time rather than fill it.

That division plays out clearly across Trip's two sides. "Trip" (Original Mix) at 6:31 and 125 BPM is the set-ready entry point. The slightly higher tempo and tighter runtime give it enough forward motion to sit comfortably in a mix mid-build, where you need something that holds the floor without announcing itself. It is the track to reach for when the room has momentum and you want to sustain rather than redirect it. "Entity" (Original Mix) at 7:36 is the different animal. The extra minute of runtime is not incidental, it reflects a track built for slower atmospheric evolution, better deployed at a plateau moment when the floor has already surrendered to the low end and the room is ready to drift rather than push. Drop it at the wrong tempo or the wrong moment and it will float past unnoticed; drop it right and it will hold a room for its entire length without once feeling long.

The signature technique worth studying across both cuts is the use of dub-space as structural glue rather than decoration. On Superordinate Dub Waves releases, reverb and echo trails are rarely applied as afterthought processing. They carry melodic information forward across bars, creating a sense of continuous motion even when the percussion is minimal and the harmonic content barely shifts. Listen specifically to how long the decay tails run on the textural elements in "Entity" without the track losing its rhythmic grounding. That balance between atmosphere and anchor is the technical lesson here, and it is harder to execute than it sounds.

Superordinate Dub Waves has built its catalogue on exactly this kind of tight, purposeful pairing, and Trip lands as another clean entry in that run. For the specialists who stock their crates with this kind of material, both tracks are functional additions with staying power well beyond the release week.