- Batu's development as a producer has been so consistent that it's begun to seem lazy to call each new release his "best yet." Nevertheless, the West Country producer's return to Livity Sound's backwards sublabel—following a string of outlandish bangers on Hotline, Mistry and his own Timedance—is just that. This single is particularly satisfying because it reflects both sides of Batu's musical personality, and, in doing so, it marks out the extremes of the Livity aesthetic.
On one side is "April These," demonstrating the style's serious big-room potential. The rhythms are rugged and broken-beat, but they're harnessed to a focussed, linear structure that's guaranteed to prop up a fading dance floor. The tuned-percussion lines, dextrous and densely layered, give the thing a Pev-style sense of jittery energy. Balancing it out is "Bleeper Feed," a potent shot of British weirdness. The track's drums—electro at the opening, breaking into UK funky somewhere around the middle—have little to do with the squall of electronic interference raging across their surface. Batu has used this technique before, and here, as elsewhere, the klaxon tones, splatters of delay and weird feedback trails walk a thin line between chaos and loop-based stability. Sometimes it's hard to tell where we're headed, but it's a hell of a ride.
Lista de sequência de músicasA Bleeper Feed
B April These