- Though it's still too early to know for sure, James Donadio seems to have split his sound into two separate trajectories over the last year. If his long-running Prostitutes alias now focuses primarily on the kind of industrialized beatwork heard on both 2017's Música Techno Para Discoteca Vol.1 and the forthcoming Aluminium Garage 12-inch, then StabUdown Productions is swiftly becoming the Cleveland musician's outlet for grubby, relentlessly twitchy productions that smother techno in scraps of jungle, hip-hop, roots music and electro. The self-released Plastic System is intense, firing off bursts of harshly clipped syncopation spiked with what sounds like strangled James Brown shrieks ("Hemlock Milkshake"), thudding bass and Middle Eastern howls ("Dread Yolk") and manically repetitive percussion somewhere between early dancehall and obscure digital dub ("Mold Hype").
Yet for all its dense, nervous clatter, StabUdown Productions' still-evolving sound is deliriously fun, paying tribute to the humid euphoria central to the mythology surrounding soundsystem culture. This feeling hits fever pitch on "Bristol Hostel," A feast of breaks spiked with Latin percussion and synth stabs, its title seems to nod to old-school hip-hop ("Bristol Hotel" being a classic LL Cool J cut) and Bristol's association with Jamaican music and jungle. This is pure, unadulterated dance party music, and it's a joy to crank.
TracklistA1 Plastic System
A2 Hemlock Milkshake
A3 Mold Hype
B1 Dread Yolk
B2 Bristol Hostel