Bulgarian producer Liar’s newest EP Scorpio is a futurist EP that takes a lot of cues from the more experimental end of the grime spectrum – most akin to the dry, brutish machine funk of Mumdance and the Night Slugs camp.
Utilising pitiless deep, industrial kicks (that often carry all of the tunes’ bassweight) alongside claps positioned in hi-hat positions, the Bucharest based artist’s dry, ‘reverb is for pussy’s’ tunes are, pummellingly hard at points. These hard moments, which generally pepper each track, are usually tempered by 90s hardcore diva vocals, little washes of psudo-organic instrumentation, vocal samples and lots of cowbell.
The moments of harmony and ambience that are generally superb, affecting pieces of music in their own right usually come as almost beatless intros or breakdowns – which again, to me, is a hallmark of Mumdance’s work -before the tracks drop into their characteristic, almost purely percussive workouts or – if you will allow a brief flight of fancy – muscular, gym based exercise regimes for steroid driven drum machines.
The tunes are kinda like pounding, industrial techno but with the patterns of grime, funky and bass music as a whole. The one exception to this rule being The Ballad of Scorpio which is a delightfully, retro, 80s-esq drum machine funk based number, that utilises a sexy stabbed melody, sleazy indistinguishable vocal samples and lush pad work – it could easily soundtrack a disco scene in a cheesy 80s B-movie and is a utterly welcome change to the unrelenting modernist music that proceeds it.
In a recent interview with Pigeons and Planes, Liar said he was able to fall asleep to the music on this EP, a statement I find hard to believe. The music is detailed and unpredictable enough to be headphone music sure, but when you are working with drums that are as hard as these, sleep is not on the cards.
This is dance music to the extreme. It is dry and clipped, in short primed for sound system destruction.How it would be mixed is not for me to judge, but I can’t imagine it being conducive to techno-esq subtle blends. Chopped and spat out at me like the ratt-a-tat-tat machine gunfire its kicks resemble somewhat, perhaps. Or, perhaps more likely, they will be deftly mixed in via their lush, lovingly rendered breakdowns and intros. The fact that the percussion and drum tracks as a whole are so militarily regimented and unswung is a definite asset, as it will enable the tunes to serve as a nice and barren contrast to the bombastic swing and syncopation of the more traditional grime, bass music and garage it will surely sit side by side with in a DJ set.
Like I say it isn’t all about the drums, but that is a massive, massive part of the aesthetic Liar has gone for. They carry basically the entire low end weight of a set of tunes which are pretty much completely devoid of actual basslines. In fact, they carry the entire EP, and if they weren’t on-point, which thankfully they clearly are, then the whole release would have fallen flat on its face. The diva vocals are also hallmarks of the production technique on this release, and when put in the context they have been, are extremely unique even despite the fact little has been done to them really apart from their excellent selection and placement within the tunes themselves.
All things said, I like this EP – which also comes with remixes of probably the finest EP cut ‘Key party’ from Splutz and Foba, neither of which come anywhere near touching the original and a sexy as fuck reese laden VIP of the opening number- It just keeps growing on me the more I listen to it as well, which is always a good thing.
Words: Al Kennedy