MUSIC

OK this is a full madness; visually impaired pensioners Anne Goss (75), Kathleen Allott (74) and Mick Gladwin (65) aka Rotherham Sight & Sound play the music of persistent prism disruptor Rian Treanor with a knockout set of mutant dancehall and mercurial electro-styled zingers, a huge tip if you’re into Autechre, SND, Kakuhan, Iueke, Shubharun Sengupta. Rian Treanor keeps knocking new doors of possibility with his new label Electronic Music Club and its initial focus on Rotherham Sight & Sound, participants of a community-based initiative in their shared post-industrial home town Rotherham. Utilising software synths designed by Rian and his dad Mark Fell, the trio twist out vortices of shearing, asymmetric anarchitecture, rudely resembling the sort of hyper-contemporary styles alluded to in Rian’s solo works, but inflected with cranky timing and an intuitive freedom that bears extraordinary results, especially when considering the fact the trio had no prior musical ability, and only encountered electronic music a few years ago. After a couple of years of practice and performance, ‘Action Potential’ now firms up their quicksilver sound for club and home buzzes with seven actions that warp and morph from the needling jolts and hoof of ‘Pass The Go’, to shuddering detonations in ‘Dial’, each with a properly electrifying force carrying a genuine futureshock. Working within Rian’s systems-based framework, Anne, Kathleen, and Mick deploy a tactile feel for the machines, finely honed over the course of many sessions at the Rotherham Sight & Sound facility, that uses their visual impairments to synaesthetic advantage. Between the wickedly metallic ragga swivel of ‘Hold’, the diffractive chain reactions of ‘When It Ends’, and more tempered, sloshing sensuality of ‘30 Seconds’, the trio follow their noses down wormholes that manifest an ideal of accessibility and expressionism within electronic music contexts that Rian and Mark have long worked towards, with Anne, Kathleen and Mick’s relative lack of cultural conditioning in this paradigm prompting them to act on pure instinct. Seriously, this has to be one of the most unexpectedly brilliant and boundary shattering sides of the year, not to be missed by any self-respecting follower of the future or hyper present.

NUG is a music project by Florian T M Zeisig and PVAS. Napping Under God was recorded in Berlin in late 2020 as a live session under the timeless influences of bong and sterni, love and kindness.

Multidisciplinary artist Jermay Michael Gabriel and producer Giovanni Isgrò team up as Plethor X to present a debut EP of anti-colonial resistance, an unfolding experiment in self-determination. Colonial trauma has no linear trajectory, and neither does memory. It seeps and sinks into the fibres without a temporal pattern, crossing generations, back and forth between past, present and future. Plethor X channel the multifaceted dimensions of such phenomena, exorcising trauma through sound, embracing cultural legacies and collective memories as a form of healing. The driving force behind the record is the Habesha musical tradition, distinctive of Jermay's childhood - samples of the masinko, an Ethiopian and Eritrean one-stringed instrument, are used extensively - transposed into rhythmic structures onto which Isgrò playfully grafts elements of footwork, ghetto house, as well as gqom and singeli—a space-time gateway of complicity and experimentation. Plethor X’s soundscapes are Afro-futurist ecosystems of explicit messages—'Don't use the N word’ is distinctly heard in ‘Negro’—coalesced with frenzied percussive textures built through destruction. With ‘Bet’ we experience Muna Mussie's hypnotic recitation of Tigrinya words drawn from a set of nursery rhymes and words emblematic of Eritrean culture. The voice of Mussie, who shares the same origins as Jermay, serves here as a vehicle to express a certain identity melancholia, the repetitive mode sounding like a soothing process of reconciliation. PAN-affiliated producer STILL makes his own contribution by reworking Plethor X’s material in 'Fendika', raising the rhythmic tension with his signature colourful, plugged-in dancehall style. That with Europe is a bridge to an indefensible continent, with a predatory, plundering nature, sold as 'civilisation'. In ‘What You Mean’, Isgrò and Jermay conspire against their own Eurocentrism, regurgitating it from within. The package is complemented by remixes from OOH-sounds affiliated artists nobile, Losssy (formerly unperson), Glass and WEȽ∝KER. Their brilliant versions of 'Bet' are a further investigation of the evocative potential of Mussie's voice and expression of the collective nature of this project.

On Unleash, Heavee works simultaneously outside and inside the box, rebuilding footwork's framework and vibe to his own unique specification.

Known to his friends as Darryl Bunch Jnr, Heavee is a Queer, Chicago born and raised DJ and producer. He has a long history within footwork, and like many producers in the genre, started off as a dancer. Notably his track 'it's Wack' with DJ Rashad, from his 2018 album WFM on the Teklife label ended up in Flying Lotus' Grand Theft Auto jukebox , his tracks ‘Icemaster’ and ‘8-Bit Shit’ from earlier Hyperdub compilations are still much loved, and outside the Teklife crew, he's also co-produced alongside Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones.

2022’s 'Audio Assault' EP on Hyperdub restarted his musical journey with some synth-driven, melodic footwork, but Unleash goes much further into audio world-building with a fresh, spongy and citrusy sound palette and rich, bright chord sequences. It's minimal, airy, balancing light and dark, sometimes breezy and sometimes clinical.

Rhythmically, it's dance floor ready, using footwork's 160 template as a springboard for building new drum sounds to express these rhythms. It's also marked out by transforming footwork's classic commanding chants into personal mantras and declarations - 'it's time for something different', 'Unleash the Freak'. 'Make It Work', with no time for unspecified enemies. At times, it seems to draw from R&B, rap, jazz and grime, with a sprinkling of bitter-sweet vintage Detroit techno and a resonance with ‘Pretty Ugly’ Era Scratcha DVA, but with the up-to-date palette and FXs you might hear from friends and contemporaries such as Fractal Fantasy and Suzi Analog.

It's clear that Heavee has upped his production and song writing game for Unleash and he cites studying physical modelling, modulation, and other forms of synthesis along with discussions and collaborative jams with peers that fed into the process. The album takes footworks 'eats all' approach to music in a fresh direction with a freedom of spirit. It's a strong addition to the footwork cannon and shows that experiments in dance music can be fun. 

It is about time to revive the label with a new vinyl compilation named "Second Drop", following the tradition of a nice roundup across various bass music tearitorries. One side pumps at uplifting 160 BPM, while the flipside is shifting down to relaxing 135 and even 120 speeds. Nuphlo and Bukkha team up for the energetic modern halftime piece "Drip". Nuphlo might ring a bell as part of The Nasha Experience from London and Leeds, connecting asian roots with nowadays UK bass sounds. Bukkha is state-side born and has recently emigrated to Spain, from where this worldwide touring DJ machine is firing a plethora of bass music styles on renowned labels like Moonshine, System and Innamind. DjBadshape passes the breakbeat driven torch with handsome melodies and subby kickbass on "Drift" to reflect Leipzig's well various scenes. While checking her tracks on Defrostatica and Human, one may also find artworks for Bassmæssage and more. Sun People is closing the 160 side with the deep but dirty retro 90s jungle bit "Rise Up". Combining Techno, Footwork and UK Hardcore Breakbeats, the Graz based bass buab made it to releases on Exit, Rua and Alphacut. Flipping sides, Dub Across Borders redefines steppers dub into the dreamy yet rolling "Bass Tree Dream". The project was found by a Copenhagen dubber when living in Colombia, fusing the rural folklore with soundsystem energy into a world-bass music. This can be heard on labels like Basscomesaveme, Translation and 45Seven and is best to be experienced in its live dubbing appearance which premiered at a Bassmæssage in 2015. Paranoid One grabs these feelings and drops them a bit more sinister, "Glimp" manages to hide a playful 4 to the floor kick as well beyond its smooth soundscapes and percussions. As Paranoid Society these split personalities from Tallinn were delivering to Modern Urban Jazz and Alphacut already since a decade at least. bhed finishes with the slow far-away dubsteppish "Minerva". Make sure to not only check the releases on Row and Trusik but also the freshly baked Neuburg based liveact inbetween cosy ambient and lush bass music at the next Bassmæssage on 18th November in LeipZig!