The Answer Is In The Beat

Misty Conditions: D’zzzz LP (Planet Mu, 2013)

December 21, 2013 at 7:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Henry Collins retired his Shitmat alias after taking the project to its logical conclusion (by remixing every UK #1 pop hit ever), and now he’s started a new project with Richard Wilson (Burnkane), offering a distorted, blown-out take on trap and juke beats. There’s no trace of EDM glitz or glamour, and it’s actually quite dark and dirty, maybe even depressing. “Dank” seems like the obvious would-be anthem with its repeated sample of “I have that dank, dank, dank”, but it’s just so slow and blown-out, it sounds like it’s suffocating rather than getting high. And there’s sort of a dub techno undercurrent to it, along with the crushing, harsh distorted beats and hip-hop samples. It’s actually quite refreshing in how anti-glamorous it is. It’s followed by “Drowning”, a shuddering, nervous-heartbeat dark ambient interlude. Then the first side ends with “Dilute”, a noisy broken-rhythm experiment that could be on an Opal Tapes release. Side B starts with a track called “Death”, which further points to the darkness of this album. It starts with tablas, and it’s not the only exotic-sounding percussion on the album, which also points towards some sort of “otherness” not really associated with these types of beats. Not for nothing does “Demonoid” start with a computerized voice saying “we would like to remind you to take notice of what is happening around the globe.” “D’mmmm” has chopped/looped R&B vocal samples and detailed beats that approach juke, but somehow it’s still sort of aired out, and again severely distorted so that it sounds like it’s suffocating, or damaged in some way. The part at the end where the beats turn into harsh 4/4 kicks and the vocal samples pile up is particularly exhilarating. The album ends with “Damiana”, maybe the most screwy, blown-out track of all, which manages to squeeze a high-BPM kick inside its squirmy, squelchy groove. A pretty fantastic album that hints at current trends, but takes them into dark, unexpected directions.