- Dreamy house and back-bending breakbeats.
- Back in August of this year, New York artist Alien D released a six-track EP on Sorry Records which featured a squishy, amphibious run of four tracks. His second EP this year, D's World for Budget Cuts Records and Tapes, offers up four slower, housier cuts that maintain the dreamy ambient synth swells that are quickly becoming his signature sound.
While Alien D doesn't necessarily subvert much of the cycling trends in dance music—there are plenty of breaks and drowsy melodies—he adds his own flair to the classic styles he revisits. The anthemic bassline of and chunky drums of "Magnet Dance" hint at heavy-handed '90s New York house, but Alien D takes the club banger into a hazier, more subdued direction. The sometimes discordant, often celestial melodies of "Conga Dance" bridge Carl Craig's 1997 classic More Songs About Food And Revolutionary Art with modern ambient techno (think the Motion Ward label).
"Breaks are making a comeback" has been said for so long it feels like they’ve come back, faded out and come back again in the last ten years alone. But Alien D does a stellar job on "Berger’s Breaks" of flipping over the usual downbeat structure, playing them backwards and forwards and pulling the rest of the track with them. By shifting the syncopation slightly, "Berger's Breaks" sounds like a completely new take on the rhythm standard.
"Release" finishes off the EP with positive affirmations and warm melodies. The vocal sample, possibly lifted from a guided meditation, is pitched down and interspersed with sharp staccato drum kicks that buoy the track up from sinking into full deep ambience. A soothing yet simultaneously punchy end to a quietly creative EP, D's World tones down hard-hitting dance floor cuts with dazed melodies, balancing older sounds with the new.
Tracklist01. Magnet Dance
02. Conga Dance
03. Berger's Breaks
04. Release