This is music pushing impetus and intention to the extreme, gluing together gorilla-XX fury, experimentation and possibility at the very tip of collapsibility and ruin, remaining just faithful enough to sanity to preserve its musical heart.
Pushing rhythmic extremity without losing sight of the groove
Bristol-based Anorak drops a bang-tidy seven-tracker of gutterfunk aesthetics, articulating with incredible tenacity the breadth and depth of low-end theory. 2000mph opener “Plight” strafes the terrain with machine-gun chicanery, braindance beats and pickled 303 mentalisms. “Epitaph” ups the ante, somehow going even faster in a wall-of-sound cataclysm of imploding fury, beats and sonic vandalism. This is music pushing impetus and intention to the extreme, gluing together gorilla-XX fury, experimentation and possibility at the very tip of collapsibility and ruin, remaining just faithful enough to sanity to preserve its musical heart.
Personal standout is third track “Apprec8”, which edges into electro territory but pays no mind to the routine forms and functions that genre addiction narrowly prescribes. Electro on breaks and soulful in tone, its melodic prowess and counter-melodies propel it into peak-time territory. As it drops into a tekfunkopolian groove at its centre, the result is quite stunning. Cracker. “Sturgeons Law” returns to the earlier tips and hacks of braindance times infinity and beyond, while “Anabolic” closes the EP by bridging the madness with melody, breaks and groove, finding resolution without entirely surrendering its unruly character.
Remix duties fall to Safoh and Eraserhead. Safoh injects the opener with nasty-ass breaks, bottom-heavy wubs and kitchen sinks, amplifying Anorak’s steadfast tension into glorious cacophony. Eraserhead’s reworking of “Epitaph” smashes the ball out of several parks, rebuilding the track from the ground up into amen psychotropy. Across the release, Anorak pushes rhythmic extremity without losing sight of the groove, balancing sonic demolition with a restless, playful imagination that keeps the whole thing gloriously unpredictable.
Convolve is available on Defunkt. [Bandcamp]
