- Deconstructed UK garage to put your head in a spin.
- The Mana label invites us to think of its latest release like someone trying to get rid of a bothersome fly. "If you imagine a human hand in basic swatting motion, maybe you will also couple the image with an evasive manoeuvre of some sort; usually there is a moment of hesitation where the human is unsure whether their aim was true. 'Did I catch it?'" Diptera's disorientating twists on UK garage follow a similar dance of swatting and evasion. Their debut release was produced in relay over four years. Activist DJ made the initial sketches—"short sharp affairs focused on swung drums and darkside"—before Wesley disassembled them into something different.
The result is sort of like that post-swat moment where the fly might be terminally squished or just biding its time, ready to buzz again. It's the skipping beats and snarling bass of UK garage trapped in a twilight zone between being and dissolution. In a landscape pretty saturated with deconstructions of UK dance styles, this release stands out.
Which isn't to say it's easy to listen to. It's hard to imagine what tools Wesley used to break these tracks apart. Their rhythmic grids splinter and blur and grooves multiply prismatically or collapse in on themselves. The mixdowns swirl unevenly, sending elements spinning into foreground and background like objects on a nightmarish mobile. A handful of bolder elements offer a handhold in the avalanche of bleached percussion and digital hiss and roar, but the security they offer is often deceptive. On "Children's Story," for instance, it's volatile spurts of synth strings, and an MC whose "Yeah.. Yeah… yeah!" is soon swept away in the confusion.
On "Stem4bcc" a flatulent bassline lures us into the track's pulverisingly intense midsection. And on "F16" it's pizzicato strings—very Aphex Twin—and chords that glitch and flicker with subtle emotion. "F16" is almost pretty, which makes its near-silent 90-second outro all the more confusing. Turn the volume right up and you can hear chords and wisps of interference lurking down by the noise floor. The ghosts in the machine, maybe, or the last firing nerve endings of a splatted insect.
Tracklist01. Silver
02. Children's Story
03. F16
04. Stem4bcc