In Praise of Darkness

This is something of a dream-team for those who like their beats wonky. Alix Perez has conistently made some of the weirdest half-stepping beats in the UK drum’n’bass scene, while EPROM is one of the most technically adept of all the US west coast beat scene, his tracks played by everyone from Aphex Twin on down. Together, they made an album that booms and lurches in all the right places, swaggering out of your soundsystem like the gigantic “Jaeger” mechs of Pacific Rim. Now, OK, just occasionally that swagger veers a little far into EDM flash-for-its-own-sake, but way more often there’s an innate weirdness and underlying junglist sense of dread that keeps it surprising, brain-frazzling and brutally effective.