- Steffi balances fierce electro with fragile melodies and contemporary club rhythms.
- In 2019, the renowned Panorama Bar residents Steffi and Virginia dropped an unexpected double-pack, Work A Change. Over four sides of wax, the two worked through their intimate knowledge of electro, IDM, techno and no wave. There wasn't a "Yours" in sight as the two traded bars over spacey synth work and stuttering electro drum programming. And that was precisely the point. It's been a decade since Steffi released her breakthrough single and to call her a house producer at this point feels a bit like telling people her longtime collaborator Martyn makes dubstep. While this transition away from beloved purveyor of P-bar anthems hasn't been without its growing pains, her latest LP, The Red Hunter, is a masterclass in the strange. She crafts otherworldly club tracks that feel haunting and wondrous in equal measure.
Listening to the The Red Hunter, it's tempting to throw around descriptors like "deconstructed club" to describe the album's best moments. The LP is filled with rhythms that hit like spring rain, surprising you from seemingly impossible angles all at once. Just check out the dembow-like slink and see-sawing bassline on "South Facing Brightness," or the ping-ponging breakbeat on "Lasting Lovers." If you took out the lush, Stinson-style chords on both, they'd work in a Nick Léon or Jubilee set. "Agents Of Change" is even better. Across head-spinning drums, the synths move with like muscular contractions, before she adds in stabs that sound like rave melodies dissolved in lye. She even looks to hip-hop on the record, adding a bit of trap menace to the snares on "Primary Chaos."
These tracks aside, the bread-and-butter of the record is electro. Long before the genre became en vogue, Steffi's Klakson label was pushing rough-and-ready 808s that split the difference between the aggression of EBM and the stargazing of Detroit. The straight-up electro tracks on The Red Hunter sound like they'd unleash howls of joy if played out by Helena Hauff and tears of gentle sadness during a movie montage. As a whole, the album is an astonishing blend of dance floor brutalism with brittle beauty. Just listen to that melancholy melody sweeping across the taut anxiety of "North Facing Shade," or the closing credits chord progression on "Tragedy Turns To Comedy."
As my proliferation of visual metaphors should make clear, The Red Hunter is a cinematic album. Each track straddles the boundary between contemporary club music and soundtrack sound design (like if Nathan Micay made electro instead of kosmische for Industry). All of this speaks to Steffi's strength and growth as a producer. When she was pushing house tracks, it was the height of the deep house revival, and that was precisely the sort of weaponry she needed to get people moving. Times have changed and so has Steffi, and The Red Hunter doesn't have a whiff of nostalgia about it. This is a collection of contemporary club tracks that are experimental and challenging, sure, but also straight-up bangers, made for the best sound systems and the best dance floors in the world.
Tracklist01. Irreversible Cessation
02. Alternation Of High And Low
03. Primary Chaos
04. North Facing Shade
05. The Red Hunter
06. Tragedy Turns To Comedy
07. Agent Of Change
08. Individuals From All Walks
09. South Facing Brightness
10. Lasting Lovers