Easily crossing over from IDM to dance music, Adiel’s Method EP is a slow burn of darker emotions, especially on tracks like “Mad” and “Time is Out.” Expertly crafted and dipped in dub, acid, and analogue drums, it pricks up the ears with colorful detail while its rhythmic flames rise and lick at a cool center, hollowing out the eye of the storm and leaving us with a perplexing tranquility.
Rome’s star underground DJ/Producer Adiel develops her most mature sound yet in her four-track Method EP, with a vinyl pressing released on Len Faki’s label Figure.
“Method” begins with crunchy sub-bass pulses and a tribal drum pattern. A haunting melody announces a fork in the darkly lit path — enter a breakbeat shuffle, and the choice has been made. What completes the hypnosis– and sets this track apart from the others– is a nostalgic, sawtooth synth that shapeshifts and oozes over a foggy melody and breaks. One hears influences from Burial, as well as Ritchie Hawtin in her ability to mix at extended length, achieving shifts in the track’s arrangement that are barely perceptible, camouflaging in a wider techno texture. The mental aspect of minimal techno is there, but still, she infuses the tracks with tribal-inflected dance energies.
In “Mad,” hydraulic hi-hats and buoyant drums set the stage. Heavy, resonant bass drums coalesce the feelings. Midway through, a darker mood takes over when Adiel allows the acid bass line to prevail, unleashing a momentous flow of rage. Never content with fixating on one melody or note, she layers them until a scene of controlled, dissonant chaos emerges. In the last two minutes of the song, low acid noises grow to besiege the bass.
“Time is Out” will unnerve even the snobbiest of underground crowds. It begins with a bass drum that besets the tempo, disturbing the calm ripples of a synth interval pattern that orbit rapidly around the new bass. This track is made for being drenched in sweat. Soft hisses of the hi-hat guide the breath, and a shifting synth note sirens the entrance of arpeggios riffing like a punk guitar solo. As the kick drum quickens, the arpeggiated synths intensify to unleash unstoppable momentum. As the track diminuendos out, a cheeky reminder of the introductory, red-herring tempo returns like a blip or an outtake.
“In Your Power” concludes this fast-paced EP with a downtempo feel and fantastical ambient melodies. Voices murmur to each other against static noise. More so in this track than others, Adiel’s sound explores a subterranean dreaminess inside her cradling beats.
-Lina Xing
Link – Bandcamp
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