No sooner has the artist formerly known as Bass Clef reinvented himself as Myriad Myriads, he’s immediately put out two slabs of electronic brilliance, barely a month apart, on twin taste-making labels The Trilogy Tapes and Wrong Speed Records. The latter of these is All The Hits and it is executed, much like the swiftly delivered back-to-back releases, in a flurry of swift one-two jab combos.
Tracks three and four (‘Third Hit’ and ‘Fourth Hit’) relocate Detroit futurist breaks to The Hague. Initially it appears that Myriad Myriads has shown a sterling level of restraint in rationing ‘Third Hit’ to just ninety seconds but it then becomes clear, through unwinding synth shots and 303 wobbles, that the accompanying ‘Fourth Hit’ is really the back half of a three-minute whole.
Similarly, the short and snappy beat contortions on the eleventh and twelfth cuts (titled jitter-enticingly ‘Tenth Hit’ and ‘Eleventh Hit’) complement one another as they disappear into an old-school hip-hop trudge that sounds not unlike aging instrumentals being sucked backwards through a wind tunnel.
It’s not all quick-fire rhythm ballistics, however. All The Hits feels like a journey through mind-mangling re-imaginations of global dancefloor culture, reshaping and framing the multitude of genres that have informed our man’s tastes. ‘The ping-ponging pops and Teutonic ruptures of ‘Sixth Hit’ arrive as if Kraftwerk are being fed into DeForrest Brown Jr.’s DAW. 90s house chords collide with oddball drums on ‘Second Hit’, ‘Pouring Water Into The Levee’ finishes the album in true big beat style, and it’s a trip back to the 80s as the tenth track’s jungle inclinations gradually degrade and merge into The Cure’s iconic ‘Close To Me’ drum pattern.
Stuttering and stumbling, ‘Twelfth Hit’ is a deliberate unmasking of the oh-so-smooth production often associated with moneyed electronic music. This is the eager, scrape-kneed cousin of business techno, refusing the trust fund and taking the left-hand path instead.
‘A Place To Stay A Space To Play’ is the longest track on the album and, whilst international touchstones are rife, there’s something dank and innately British about these mutant garage beats. Like they’ve been pulled together by someone with one hand on an 808 and the other shovelling the only logical form of sustenance – a Greggs vegan sausage roll – into their mouth.
We even get a glimpse of the future, via the opening track, which seems to depict a not-too-distant reality where humans are forced to listen to AI pilots revving the engines of their drones as they career through stagnant clouds of grey smog.
This isn’t a grab bag of loosely related ideas. It’s a series of markers tracing out the shape of this thing. In this new year of our lord, Myriad Myriads is beating the bounds of sound, showing where he’s been and where he’s heading.
