- Surrounding Peder Mannerfelt's excellent Controlling Body album, a series of EPs have seen him apply his minimalist practice to dance floor music in strange and vivid ways. These productions pull apart conventional dance music sounds and structures, and in some of them you can count the number of separate elements on one hand. But these elements are so eccentric, and so skilfully deployed, that the results have a ravey intensity. This might explain why they've earned a home on adventurous dance labels, in this case Glasgow's Numbers. Equality Now isn't the best release in this set—Mannerfelt's Hinge Finger EP was meatier. But it's another striking transmission from an artist like no other.
The title track is the crowd-pleaser, thanks to the computerised voices reciting the titular demand. They're tuned weirdly, to make an awkward kind of melody, and their robot affect sits oddly with the hoover shrieks and angry 4/4. The other tracks are more brow-furrowing experiments. "Breaking Pattern" uses similar materials without the show-stealing vocal. The beat is a jangling grid of toms and rimshots, over which sustained synth tones glitter uneasily. The breakdown is a brief, subdued solo for a wailing synth tone—part animal call, part power drill heard through a wall. With "Rules, Ropes & Strings," the EP subsides into calming ambient. There's another klaxon tone, but it keens sadly behind a single rippling chord, while a dull kick drum keeps unsteady time.
TracklistA1 Equality Now
B1 Breaking Pattern
B2 Rules, Ropes & Strings