ALWAYS EVERYTHING

SUPERISK // FIND YOUR WAY

Bristol’s been a real hub for synth-based music lately, and its reappropriation of 8-bit and videogame samples, West Coast G-funk and eighties electropop has found a surprising conceptual middle ground with the US likes of James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin, chopped ‘n’ screwed hip-hop and Chicago juke. But our city’s junglist history and soundsystem roots have given its music a far more direct physical heft than the dreamy, unfocused sounds coming from across the pond. Even footwork, with its emphasis on motion and the demands of the floor, comes across as an entirely different beast on headphones. Its meshed webs of vocal samples and sudden changes in direction are uneasy and hypnotic, and initially leave the listener unsure as to how it’s even possible to move to music so deliriously unpredictable. DJ Nate, whose upcoming Da Trak Genious compilation on Planet Mu shows off the more abstract end of the genre, is particularly confounding, sending the mind spiraling off in hissy fits as it tries to figure out what the hell’s going on (just check out the cosmic mindfuck of ‘See Into My Eyes’ from his Hatas Our Motivation EP – it’s Evanescence as you’ve never heard them before).

On the other hand, the UK’s synth-heavy bass mutations tend to hit like a ton of bricks. Superisk’s upcoming debut 12” for Peverelist’s Punch Drunk label is no exception – ‘Find Your Way’ rides off stabs of lopsided bass so thick they sound as though they’re doing physical damage to the world around them. The track itself is typically hard to place, landing somewhere in the fuzzy region between Joker’s colourful dubstep/grime stylings and early Wiley eskibeat. It’s certainly more grime than dubstep, and has found its way all over Rinse FM accordingly. But what makes ‘Find Your Way’ so addictive is its deliciously spaced-out melodic motif, which twists and bends into every possible shape over the track’s four-minute runtime, and a cheeky plucked string sample I’m pretty sure is sourced from Final Fantasy VIII. Mensah’s remix doesn’t play with its fundamental elements, but sets them off against a slightly straighter syncopated beat quite opposed to the original’s disorienting lurch. Excellent stuff as ever from Punch Drunk, and sets the scene nicely for even more chromatic action on their next twelve from Hyetal & Peverelist.

Rory