Kevin Martin has been familiar with duo settings since he and Justin K. Broadrick coalesced in the early '90s as Techno Animal, but the Bug man has seemed particularly keen to operate in that formation since meeting with drone sorcerer Dylan Carlson for 2017's Concrete Desert. After that previous Bug album, Martin reactivated King Midas Sound with only Roger Robinson and essentially resumed Techno Animal beside Broadrick under the name Zonal. In Blue is another duo recording. In a sense, the album picks up where the first half of Angels & Devils left off, splaying its fusion of narcotized vocals, threatening atmospheres, and entrancing riddims. The material originates in instrumentals Martin made for a 2018 Solid Steel radio program. Post-transmission, the producer was seeking a vocalist for the tracks and met his match when Dis Fig asked for his consent to use KMS' "On My Mind" in a DJ mix. Martin obliged and was seduced in turn by Dis Fig's Purge, which led to the pair working over a two-year period on the shaping of the sixth Bug album. Throughout Purge, Dis Fig tended to submerge her voice in sheets of noise and switched between eldritch phrasings, reverberant screams, and fraught quaverings. There's less volatility over these convulsive dancehall deconstructions from Martin. Her voice is more beguiling and intimate, often just above a whisper, sometimes in an anxious state verging on panic, and intermittently erotic, if never as explicit as Robinson's readings on KMS' Solitude. Given that the bulk of the beats on Concrete Desert played out in slow motion, it's a thrill to hear Martin stimulate hip and neck movement again. His juddering drums and cone-toasting bass frequencies are dispensed with more clarity and crispness than ever, while the swarming ambient FX are in full effect, never quite overpowering Dis Fig. Only on the closing "End in Blue" does the voice of Martin's partner dissipate, and once it does, it's already missed, prompting an impulsive rewind.