In the eternal now of the strobe-lit sweatbox, innovation functions in a different way to the rest of culture. Yes of course, the thrill of the new has consistently been a vital part of dancefloor culture, but so has the familiarity of particular sonic signatures that emerged from its fervid evolutionary processes. From the endless echo of classic disco house and rave samples in the mainstream, to the purity of raw, churning acid house in underground basements: once something works, it works.
Sometimes the sounds that endure are super niche. For example, some time around the middle of the 2000s, at the same time dubstep was making its dramatic shift from being enjoyed by a few hundred people in Croydon and Bristol to being a global force, various musical dialects began to separate out within it, one of which was particular dark, moody and sonically exacting. Names like Vex’d, Milanese, Various Productions, Ital Tek all created vistas of dystopic menace that sounded completely thrilling rolling over you in a dark room.
The style never cohered enough to even have a name, and by the 2010s most of its practitioners had gone on to other things, but its influence has rippled through electronic music ever since. Now, brilliantly, it’s been revived – on the Planet Mu label, which was home to most of the above names – by Kenyan producer Freddy “Slikback” Njau. Already established as a prolific and experimental artist across tempos and styles, for this album he’s at his most focused yet, and sculpting sci-fi landscapes that are at once super familiar and thrillingly alien.
Like those acts on the fringes of dubstep’s breakout era, everything is about the tense-and-release dynamic of rhythms and deep bass that pulse along at half of hard techno’s speed, but with enough kinetic energy in the subliminal detail and industrial distortion to make it still feel like fast-moving rave music. Aspects of hip hop, dancehall, techno and other club styles weave in, as do truly avant-garde polyrhythms on occasion, and the precision of sound design stops this feeling retro as such. But Njau clearly understands that certain ways of sonically pushing and pulling the body might be familiar but they absolutely work. This isn’t for the faint-hearted, but if you want music that will overwhelm you, get it up loud and it really works.
Listen to "Trars":
