- Space garage? Maybe. Granted, it's a stupid term but it describes Christian Andersen's uniquely astral bass music a hell of a lot better than dubstep. It seemed like Andersen, AKA XI, flipped a switch at the beginning of 2010 and his music transformed from withdrawn codeine dubstep to heavily percussive spacewalk shuffles. Tracks like "Slippin'" or "The Ghost" were some of the trippiest bass music from last year.
The two tracks here are the most overtly accessible of XI's career. They shimmer and tremble as if they were constructed purely out of liquid. "Gamma Rain"'s severely strangled horn riff squeezes through manically as synths bubble: it's energetic, evocative and maybe a little psychedelic. Even more melodically-centered is "Medicate," which bends a sci-fi whistle over a somersaulting lurch as it hurtles through a magnetic storm twinkling with glimmering 8-bit interference and stomach-churning subs. These are confident and engaging songs that are not only sonically adventurous (and drop-dead gorgeous) but so beautifully ecstatic that their poppier leanings have to compress and shoot forth in dazzling bursts just to get out. Even more impressively, they position the Toronto producer as a forerunner in the always-expanding North American bass music scene, part of a new breed hell-bent on redefining the already loosely defined.
Tracklist A Gamma Rain
B Medicate