Jlin – BuZilla
Jlin is a steelworker from the impoverished city of Gary, near Chicago, with a sideline in some of the most powerful footwork production ever laid down. Like Traxman, she abstracts the sound until it’s more anxious, with rhythms squabbling for space. Her debut live show was one of my highlights at the recent Unsound festival, some of it so funky I emitted some embarrassing agitated moans, and her album is one of the year’s best. She’s now following it up with a new EP, Freefall. BuZilla, premiering exclusively here, is from the same sonic palette of video-game samples and chilly snares. The absurdly synthetic trombones do the rhythmic work, leaving the drums free for the kinds of scattering flurries you hear in free jazz – only weirder. Juke nerds will also dig the shoutout from fellow producer RP Boo.
Kamixlo – Demonico EP
The year’s most virulent strain of underground dance music – transmitted by the likes of Rabit, Arca, Lexxi, the Janus crew, the Principe label and others – has been a kind of hellish, Latin-inflected cyberpunk where the beats mimic cocked shotguns. The latest proponent is Kamixlo, a Brixton producer who takes the trashy swing of cumbia and kuduro and reworks it. The sirens in Spixcity make it sound like a prison riot, while alongside the chopped chatter of female MCs, Lariat features a man apparently gargling with magma.
Future Times compilation
Cheapskate lovers of lo-fi disco rejoice: the wonderful Future Times label has put out a pay-what-you-want retrospective compilation. Run by Maxmillion Dunbar, one half of Beautiful Swimmers and man behind many mindblowing bangers, the label has an aesthetic that is loosely “Chicago house remix of chewed 1986 VHS promoting Majorcan timeshare”, and it is an ever-welcoming corner of club culture. As well as deep dancefloor cuts, there’s Jordan GCZ’s Swingonoguitaro, which pairs spiritual house with Electric Counterpoint-style guitar, Tom Noble and Protect-U’s slices of heavily fried boogie, and Hashman Deejay’s slurred take on new jack swing.
Acre
This Mancunian producer flits like a depressive sprite around grime, UK bass and techno. His debut album, Better Strangers, has just come out, and it’s apparently about “the feeling that some people make better strangers than friends”. Saucer of milk! But whatever personal beefs have gone into it, they’ve clearly been creatively stimulating: this is a beautiful record, with urgent bangers such as Spiral alongside ambient studies, grime instrumentals and Clams Casino-ish rap productions like the blown-out Love.
Oneohtrix Point Never
Back with new album Garden of Delete, Daniel Lopatin levels up once again. The US producer is undeniably influential for his anti-snobbery around electronic music, and for making ambient compositions loaded with flutes, pianos and Muzak tones alongside the murk usually associated with underground electronics. Following a spell improbably supporting Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden, there are some appropriately arena-sized numbers here: the fizzing pop-rap nightmare of Sticky Drama and the digital blitzkrieg of I Bite Through It. His love of soft rock and sentimentality still shines through, however, on vocoder ballad No Good, or Child of Rage.
