- Dutch bubbling, a kinetic dancehall mutant invented in the late '80s by Surinamese and Dutch Antillean immigrants, seems ripe for picking by current global club producers. Delft's Anti-G combined bubbling with garish Dutch house for a Planet Mu album in 2011, but otherwise there has not been much recent crossover with the wider dance music world. As with Anti-G, who landed the Planet Mu deal at the height of UK funky fever, Eindhoven producer DJ Missdevana benefits from bubbling's similarity with the London style. Her deft fusion of the two rhythmic disciplines isn't the only thing that makes her a good fit for the London label Nervous Horizon. She, like label poster boy TSVI, is a functionalist. Where much current club music favours contrast and collision, her drum tools throw DJs a bone.
Also like TSVI, Missdevana is happy to let her drums do most, if not all, of the talking. Apart from a demonically down-pitched vocal tag and a janky two-note riff that enters when the track bizarrely speeds up in the coda, "Brass" is just percussion. Its dense grid of lilting hi-hats, hand percussion and soca snares sits snugly against a technoid 4/4 groove. The rest of the EP has a looser reggaeton-like feel. "Chakra" gets the lion's share of melody in the form of a shrill midpoint loop swathed in tinny reverb. It's bookended by a sub-110 BPM dembow rhythm, against which percussion hits tug like kittens on a trouser leg. "Third Eye" is similar but more obnoxious, thanks to its sandpaper hi-end and a pitched up "aaah!" that quivers with manic energy.
Tracklist01. Brass
02. Chakra
03. Third Eye