- As Raudive, Oliver Ho has made music that's exceptionally difficult to pin down. So while the project has given him ample space to step away from the hard-edged techno he made earlier in his career, it's hard to say exactly where he's stepped to. On the Traffic EP, however, one thing is certain: you may not know what to call this racket, but it's catchy as hell. And Ho sounds like he's having a blast making it.
Running Back tends to make serious music sound more fun than most labels, and the Traffic EP fits perfectly with their project. You can almost hear "Traffic" flailing its arms as it stomps around the dance floor, its melody just daring you to call it out for making no sense. Tempos might shift in one direction or the other, but the EP doesn't get any less wily. "Psycho" sounds like a classic synth pop single that never quite got finished, though its sole lyric—"you"—is sung with such nerdy sincerity you'd feel awful finding fault with it.
Title notwithstanding, "Relentless" takes a more restrained approach, urging dancers forward with precision drum programming. "Beams," though, is where things get hottest: merging gooey ambience with prickly, iron-hot percussion, it finds bliss in an admittedly peculiar texture. A pair of alternative versions on the digital release don't bring much more to the table, but in terms of extra-weird dance floor fun, Raudive had already done his due diligence.
Tracklist A1 Traffic
A2 Psycho
B1 Relentless
B2 Beams