The promise that surrounded Ryan "Artifact" Bonfield at the time of his Breaking Through piece last year feels fully realised on "The Way It Do" and "We Trapped." What sets the Bristol producer's melting-pot approach apart from some of his UK bass contemporaries is clarity: this is no murky mix of clashing styles.
Take "The Way It Do." The rhythm track is pure upfront house with a cascading bassline. To that, Artifact straps crashing, resonant techno beats and then joins the dots with wobbly garage vocals, Zed Bias wub-wub bass drops and skippy tambourines. Bonfield's love of footwork rears its head in the rimshot pings and monstrous asymmetrical percussion that stretches across "We Trapped." In the hands of Mancunian producer Damu, "The Way It Do" morphs into an aural assault of machine gun low-end synth and sparse metronome clicks, a techno/bass colossus delivered with an exuberant snarl.
Buy Artifact - The Way It Do / We Trapped at
| 
 Other somethinksounds reviews
|
