- The Hessle Audio cofounder returns to the label for the first time since 2015 with three irresistible bangers.
- As if to make up for lost time, Hessle Audio today released two EPs, the label's first since 2018. Both slam in different ways. On Like This, Pangaea continues on his quest to make the world's fruitiest banger. Pearson Sound is simply out to contort limbs and minds. As ever, the breadth of sounds, textures, rhythms and effects across Alien Mode, his first EP for the label in five years, makes you giddy. Favourite new bits emerge with every listen. I must say: few producers cause such a surge of electricity through my veins.
All three tracks are club-ready, but none more fiercely than "Alien Mode." The sheer weight and crunch of the breakbeat, combined with bleeps and a warped vocal sample ("I feel like I'm losing my mind" / "You're not loooosing your mind"), evokes sweaty dawn dances in The Moat at Dimensions Festival. A playful pop punctuates the thunder every two bars, the kind of delicious sound a hazy raver might fixate on at the expense of the rest. "Cobwebs," which clocks in at 155 BPM, is rhythmically heavy and intricate, its pitter-patter hand percussion, sampled (legally) from "Wonder Man" by the Nigerian singer Adewale Ayuba, like a spider army on a mission. The beat is constantly under construction: throbs expand and contract, snares flit and subside, wacky fairground noises surface once and never again. It's disorientating and very sick.
By contrast, "Everything Is Inside Out" is a smooth ride. If the EP was lacking anything up until this point it was melody and emotion, both of which this track has in spades. The spacious composition allows each element to properly unfurl, first a hushed earworm, then a bleepier one, followed by the steady march of broken drums. The vibe is '90s IDM with a warehouse kick. My favourite bit, maybe on the whole EP, is the drop around halfway, when all the noise is suddenly sucked into split-second silence and unleashed as a freshly menacing groove. These left turns make Pearson Sound's music totally irresistible.
TracklistA1 Alien Mode
B1 Cobwebs
B2 Everything Is Inside Out