EPROM - Halflife

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  • When dubstep in America started bleeding into trap, Sander Dennis was the man making sense of it all. Last year's ubiquitous "Regis Chillbin" was a perfect blend of hip-hop and bass music that set the tone for what became one of 2012's most dominant trends (at least on his side of the Atlantic). His first album, Metahuman, explored that sound from every angle. Arriving a year later, Halflife boils it down to a concoction of knifing bass fuzz and wonky melodies. With most tracks clocking in around three minutes, Halflife is a series of vignettes that shows the Portland artist at his most aggressive. It's all clear from the opener "Centre Of The Sun," which consists of little more than a wildly thrashing bass sound, as if Dennis was holding the song by the scruff and shaking the hell out of it. Most of the tracks are built on a foundation of gurgling midrange and tinny hip-hop drums—think dubstep with the peaks and valleys shaved off. There's the Middle East-tinged "Beasts Of Babylon," with a synth that sounds like a Joe Satriani guitar solo, and the immense waves of "Hurricane," which takes trap and drowns it in an acid bath of sub-bass frequencies. It's all a bit confrontational, maybe enough to turn some listeners off. Having heard many of these songs in a club, I can say the more aggro moments like "Screwface" and "Hurricane" wreak a special kind of havoc on a good system. But at home, and especially over headphones, they can sound shallow, like Metahuman if all the nuance were bashed out with a sledgehammer. Dennis does show his gentler side, too: "Super FX" is a James Ferraro-style take on video game-inspired motifs, while "Turtle Ride" puts a whimsical spin on the grimy assault of the album's other tracks. He returns to his famed water sound effects with the disappointing "Vogel," the only moment on the album that feels like it's looking backwards (mainly because it's a carbon copy of "Regis Chillbin"). "Vogel" is a dividing line between Dennis' past and future; though the new sound might disappoint fans of EPROM's subtler side, it's hard to deny his ability to distill bass music to its purest, most basic form. The lengthy centrepiece "Machine Skin"—with trap hi-hats that approach drill & bass territory—and the closing synth daze of "Cloud Leanmixx" lend needed colour and dynamics to an otherwise single-minded LP. These two longer tracks nicely frame the rest of Halflife as a moment in time, capturing EPROM at his most club-ready, nothing more and nothing less. It's enough to leave the listener wondering where he might go next.
  • Tracklist
      01. Center Of The Sun 02. Beasts Of Babylon 03. Hurricane 04. Vogel 05. Super Fx 06. Lost Levels 07. Screwface 08. Machine Skin 09. Pentatonic Dust 10. Moisture 11. Turtle Ride 12. Subroc 13. Cloud Leanmixx 14. Wizard Island (Bonus Track)
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