Hyperspecific: Electronic Music for May Reviewed by Jaša Bužinel

One day you wake up and the music press suddenly decides to only review “white label” promos. No more PR-driven evaluations, just unfiltered takes. A music writer’s paradise! Anonymity can indeed be liberating, particularly in a culture where everything has to have a face attached to it. UK label unknown – untitled, which praised in an earlier column, sees an opportunity here. The artists behind their releases, uploaded to Bandcamp with no info, are only revealed after the vinyl drop. This forces you to assess them in a different way, drives anticipation and encourages a game of guess who. I am clueless as to who made uu012, although it’s definitely a stylistically flexible artist as the release covers all the bases. As the intense half-step opener ‘a1’ suggests, its aesthetic is catered towards adventure-seeking, bass-loving crowds. The “techy dembow” epic ‘a3’, a deep, emotive and restrained peak-time tune for late-night epiphanies, will be a go-to for summer headline shows in big tents and warehouses. Other tracks boast more of a soundsystem flavour, in particular ‘a2’, a twisted, tension-building breakbeat workout with a hypnotic synth earworm. ‘b3’ goes head-on into devilish Miami bass/Detroit electro realms. The retro-sounding ‘b2’ is the odd one out, channeling mid-pace spaced-out rave energy, while ‘b3’ opts for a celestial vision of mutant footwork / drum & bass for good measure. An eclectic assortment of quality club tuneage. 

Cultural cross-pollination and the interpolation of folk sounds into dance music forms is arguably still the main creative vehicle in the sphere of innovative club music, to the extent that this niche has become synonymous with novelty. To be honest, saying ‘artist x took influence from cultures y and z and created something cool’ does not have the same cultural weight as it did a decade ago. Everyone seems to be doing it. Still, there are many producers out there bringing freshness to the table, Bangladeshi-Canadian artist Raf Reza’s debut album being a great example. Ekbar is a sincere love letter to dub science, UK soundsystem culture, Bristolian bass fusionism, Baul (a devotional Bangladeshi music influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Bengali, Vaishnavism and Sufi Islam), Bangladeshi folk samples and dusty film dialogues. The title track, full-blown Bangladeshi jungle, encapsulates this vision brilliantly, with wistful female vocals, strings, tablas and folk flutes swooshing over breakneck breaks. ‘Taal Riddim’ emerges from the same mold as DJ Plead or Toumba’s 100 bpm chuggers. ‘Sadhana’ comes across as an extended break from a jungle tune that never drops, offering no release. ‘Mirror Of Love’ could be a forlorn gem from the Smith & Mighty crate. The digi dub tune ‘Cry Of The Baul’ evokes similar associations, though its folky string sample adds a distinctly Bangladeshi flavour. Elsewhere, Joba Poetry’s Bengali dub declamations on closer ‘Man As Bird’ encapsulate the kind of hybridisation that we put our money on. 

Too many releases are put out simply to promote artists’ summer shows. No vision, no intent, no cultural vitality, just dance music slop. Only a few actually have potential to make noise. The elusive Bristolian Cleyra already proved their talent on earlier Timedance compilations (both ‘Shafted’ and ‘Naked’ held promise), so it was high time for the whole package. Their strain of high-definition UK techno is not catered to fist-pumping lads (also not your regular “bassface” material!), its sonic palette is way more nuanced and delicate, backed by a strong sense for lush melodies and swooshing pads. Downtempo closer ‘Just Can’t Live Without Ya’, whose vocal sample has that Jamie XX quality, gorgeously captures this specific sensibility with its soulful afterparty vibes. On the other hand, the alarm-like synthline and storming beats of ‘Betcha Wouldn’t Hurt Me’ are anxiety-inducing while also energising, like a friendly slap in the face. I also really rate how frisky and forceful ‘Tumble Turn’ sounds due to its somewhat goofy bassline. Their productions elicit contrasting feelings, juxtaposing the ecstatic and the mellow. Considering all the techno memes about Villalobos remixes, today there are few artists pushing their productions past the 10 minute mark. Centrepiece ‘There’s Nothing Happening Between Us’ runs just below 17, making it one of the longest dance tunes I recall recently. It is a very emotive track, even disarmingly soothing during certain beaks, though it also dares to plunge deep into hypnotic techno territory. It is a fully-fleshed UK techno epic and an introspective club travelogue that maintains a tight grip on your fragmented attention despite its length, never getting boring. I reckon it could even inspire others to further explore lengthier formats.

If I had a time machine, I’d use it to learn about the soundtracks to ancient rituals, the timbres of long-forgotten instruments and primeval singing practices used to celebrate divinity. To an extent, this is also the idea behind Egyptian composer Yunis’ spiritually-charged new album. It only requires two things from you, time and patience, a luxury these days, but do yourself a favour and allow it to absorb you. Structured like a Hadra, a ceremonial crescendo of ecstatic sound emerging from Sufism, and divided in two parts, Ninety Nine Eyes puts forth saturated cosmic sounds akin to Sun Ra’s interstellar synthwork, hypnotic tombak and duff drum patterns and ecstatic mizmar melodies. It relishes in repetition, gradually unfolding its manifold elements. The  trance-inducing microtonal timbres affect your brain unconsciously, particularly in Part II, which takes you on a mind-bending trip through arcane inner and outer landscapes. While you cannot escape the embedded cultural references the timbres and instruments he employs evoke in a foreigner mind’s eye, it is also the kind of music that speaks to you beyond the cognitive and cultural level. Whether you are religious, agnostic or atheist, Ninety Nine Eyes, an inspiring exercise in neo-devotional music, will make you realise the craving for spiritual revelation is something inherently human.

Speaking of big artistic leaps, the debut album from Italian-Ivorian DJ and producer Celine Angbeletchy alias Ehua left me flabbergasted at first listen. I was expecting more of her Nervous Horizon and 3027-inspired bass techno mutations, informed by crispy percussion and heady vibes. Panta Rei presents her in a rather new light, showcasing her so far closeted pop sensibility through her surprising vocal performance. The extensive 14 track album also includes more straightforward club bangers such as ‘Matite’, ‘Sistemi’, ‘Aria’ and ‘Sola’, and even more out there productions like the sinister footwork-y jam ‘Amarena’. But the magic happens in between, in downtempo and ambient-leaning productions that put her voice on a pedestal. I feel the urge to describe it as singer-songwriter bass music, or maybe neo-club music that switches between dancefloor functionality and pure emotional release, as exemplified in the tune ‘Bumju’. ‘Albicocca’ and ‘Rea’ blend 90s downtempo/dancehall wistfulness with contemporary vocal manipulations. ‘Amarena’ and ‘Ragni’, flirtatious dialogues between r&b and breakbeat aesthetics, channel the fragile seductiveness of Kelela’s last album (similarly with the beatless closer ‘Tessa’), while ‘NYC’ and ‘Candies’ remind me of Tirzah’s stripped-down leftfield pop. In the past half decade, we have seen various club music producers delivering conceptually rounded debuts to differing degrees of success, but Panta Rei does feel like a different breed, perhaps heralding Ehua’s future trajectory as a singer-producer in the vein of Kelly Lee Owens, Ela Minus, Yaeji and others.

The cardinal sin of music writing is using the word ‘interesting’ to describe new sounds. I may be a sinner, but James Krivchenia really aroused my interest with his offbeat and quirky rhythmic jams existing at the intersection of IDM, minimalism and jazz. Realising the album also features bassist Angeleno Sam Wilkes and double bassist/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams, whose Natural Information Society project I adore, only added to the excitement. Besides, I was halfway into writing this review when I learnt Krivchenia, who’s also dipped his toes into computer music, is actually the drummer of the fantastic Big Thief. A win, win, win situation, particularly if you are a sucker for drums. The fact this is truly some funky organic braindance stuff that will arouse jazzheads makes it all the better. “Regular musicians” making “dance music” often results in music that defies categorisation, is weird and off-the-wall, and the timbral character and unorthodox sound palette here makes it fascinating even to a well-worn ear. For some technical context, many of the sounds employed come from Krivchenia’s personal field recording collection, from resonant logs and rocks breaking water’s surface to sticky and muddy natural sounds, though you will also hear drum machines and various percussion. His approach is similar to that of Uruguayan trailblazer Lechuga Zafiro, who also constructed his palette of sounds from scratch for his stunning debut album Desde Los Oídos De Un Sapo, as well as that of the Crespi Drum Syndicate and even Jlin. Performing Belief is an orgy of intricate polyrhythms that gently tickle your synapses.

When you thought producers couldn’t go any lower! The Fool by Berlin-based sound artist Sa Pa emerges from his deep affection for almost inaudible sub pulses. It is a psychoacoustic exercise in quasi-infrasound, jazzy atmospherics, heavily-processed field recordings and hallucinatory vinyl crackle. Or, if you wish, simply one of the most moving examples of 21st century dub techno. The majority of you are probably already familiar with his output, particularly albums like In A Landscape (2019) and The Mountain (2022), the latter co-produced with Deadbeat. If you are new to his opus, The Fool  comes across like a mutant baby of Basic Channel’s BCD and Jan Jelinek’s Loop Finding Jazz Records. When music becomes so thin and translucent, its foggy elements buried deep in the mix, barely-perceptible, almost indiscernible, something strange happens to our brains. They process sound as a sonic mass, an amalgam of frequencies, rather than a structured arrangement with separate constituents. I wonder how people who never heard of dub techno would react to it. What would be their knee-jerk associations? I guess some would consider it a cold, unnatural, out of this world. An opposite to Kevin Martin’s pioneering definition of isolationism as “a form of fractured, subdued music that pushes away listeners”, Sa Pa’s music seems to absorb the listener into its interior, making you inhabit its spectral body. Listening to it, I was reminded of this great video essay by Jacob Geller, discussing the fear of cold, due to its similar vibe. If I had a chance to visit a small room with walls made of subwoofers and sit down in the centre of it in complete darkness to let myself be swallowed by bass, this EP would no doubt make the playlist.

Part of growing older is finding new appreciation for genres that you were averse to as a youngster with a firm belief in your immaculate taste. The new 22-track compilation from Facta and K-Lone’s label is a nice starting point for anyone who was indoctrinated to frown upon micro, minimal and tech and house during its peak in the 2010s. There are plenty of historical reasons that might explain why people would associate these scenes with White Lotus-style white privilege, yet online discourse already shifted in their favour in recent years, somewhat heralded by Loidis’ album One Day. Some see this resurgence as the inevitable turn of dance music’s natural cycle. However in the case of the Wisdom Teeth head honchos, whose affinity for these aesthetics has long been apparent, you cannot play this card. Especially if you consider their output in the years since the release of Cape Cira in 2020, which marked a turning point. As with other longform compilations, Pattern Gardening does include some filler tracks that are too true to form and bland as a result, but the many outstanding productions here make it very worthwhile, particularly in cases where experienced producers dare to experiment with form and expectation. Putting restrictions on your workflow can bring truly thrilling results, such as Polygonia’s attempt at micro techno on ‘(=o_o=)’, Lurka’s high-tech tech house stomper ‘Swirl’ and the label heads’ magnificent joint effort ‘Each Story’. Among other highlights are the minimal percussive workout ‘Mueve Tu Cucu’ by Saudade, A. Wild’s hypnotic minimal groover ‘Situation Subterranean’, Daisy Moon’s acid-fuelled techy stomper ‘Eradication’ and the 00s deep house-inspired ‘Stumbletongued’ by Iglew. 

The Uruguayan producer and NAAFI and Hyperdub affiliate delivers a new album that unfolds like a fantasy excursion into virtual club realms. Hyper-detailed, rhythmically propulsive and overall rather ambitious, Dream Of Snakes was partly influenced by her explorations of the Irish countryside, which she recently moved to from The Netherlands. While her earlier albums were more conceptually and thematically unified, here Lila Tirando A Violeta allows herself to reveal more of her pop tendencies, giving more room for emotional songwriting with a more general appeal. Mind, its main constituents are still mind-bending cyborgian voices, iridescent synthetic sounds, ever-mutating rhythmic patterns and subtle backing frequencies. But they do come across as less leftfield, with a clearer sense of direction. The collaborative tracks ‘Heavy Is The Soul’ and ‘Eco Del Ovido’, both co-produced with Lighght, reflect this accurately. The trance/dembow/deconstructed club hit ‘New Flesh’ also has a similar crossover appeal for niche audiences. Of course you will also come across tunes that are catered for the dancefloor and ready-made for club consumption, such as the hyperactive, percussion-laden IDM-via-techno stomper ‘Ostrich/Ñandú’, co-signed by the Icelandic trio Sideproject. It is ‘Eye Slice’, a mutant Latin techno stomper featuring JQ, that proves to be the true go-to DJ weapon. Another personal favourite, and the most daring production on the record, is the love song ‘Retumba En Tu Piel’, an abstract vision of hardcore sonics folded onto an ambient framework. 

Tired of your morning routine with chill-out office playlists and cold coffee? This classic soundtrack might be a good alternative. The Japanese dance music veteran Soichi Terada has produced plenty of signature house and jungle (notably the epochal 1996 Sumo JungleLP) through the decades. A little less known pocket of his discography also comprises the music for Sony’s cult video game series Ape Escape, which follows the story of the main protagonist, the good ape Spike, and his antagonist, the magic helmet-wearing, evil-doing ape Specter. I rediscovered this via Terada’s recent vinyl box reissue on his Far East Recording label, though the music has long been available online. It is a testament to a small window in time when innovative producers and trailblazing developers worked hand in hand, churning out stone cold classics. Of course, this is nostalgia fodder, representing a strain of late 90s/early 00s electronic music that encapsulates the phrase ‘good vibes only’ without postmodern self-irony. Even calling it cartoonish would get a pass (with over-the-top chords typical of the cheesy fusion jazz funk), but it is exactly its unabashedly melodic backbone that makes it unique. Terada’s soothing jungle-via-Detroit-techno tunes, compressed for PlayStation consumption (some tracks do boast some low end weight, though I am not sure they would fare well on a dancefloor), are of course purely functional, made to accompany tasks, missions and whatnot. And yet there is something hyperspecifically ethereal to this music.