Pristine and meticulous sound design undergirded by restrained rave energy and cerebral drum patterning round out this a standout EP from Batu.
The most outstanding aspect of this 4-track EP from Batu is its pristine sound design. Elastic drums tread lightly, and are chiseled sharply by chemically-etched production. There is also underlying rave energy, but restrained by distance, like a party happening in the other room that you would rather be at than wherever you are now. Percussion is warped by the pull of gravity or some other event horizon. Sharp metal clangs accentuate the upper ranges, the rhythms are meaty and propulsive, but deftly stopping just shy of peak energy, leaving their total impact at least partly to the imagination.
Restraint, when used correctly, is one of the most effective tools for generating energizing dance music. The main rhythms and drumlines roil deep under dense meshes of fresh sound design that transfigures each measure of the music. It’s as though the drums kick up a storm of small, strange objects that spin and interact in a vortex with tightly coiled helices of metal. The bass contracts and warbles like a tensile blob of fluid vibrating in its own Leidenfrost-field. The consequence and context of every sound is so sharply articulated it almost sounds like it was recorded at some higher sample frequency.
Tension ramps up under the whirr of a drill or a scream, as ascending trills like a sensor readout detecting an approaching bogey. The drum planning is as meticulous as footwork-friendly polyrhythms. Adding and subtracting elements and instrumental accentuations at rapid speed, sometimes rims or snares that snap in for a single bar and vanish, only to strike again after another barrage of colliding metals or ricocheting plasma discharge. These layers sneak around each other so deftly that the overall rhythmic structure and groove of the track is preserved through all this change, like a transverse wave propagating from the land into water, swapping substrates but maintaining certain seismic properties.
Sometimes the rhythms are those of a line of drum majors encouraging their home team to victory, other times a soundtrack to an entire cellular city block or the alien groove of the microscopic.
-Winston Mann
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