- Two Miami-rooted producers finally make a record together (sort of).
- Nick León and Brian Piñeyro make a natural pair. They both hail from Miami, and have built rock-solid careers combining Latin music genres with their own styles of contemporary club music—techno on León's side, warm, ambient-leaning house and IDM on Piñeyro's. Their new split EP for Piñeyro's label Worldwide Unlimited highlights their similarities but more importantly underlines their distinctions, each producer taking a side of wax and showing off their carefully constructed musical personalities.
The A-side belongs to Nick León, who offers the more assertive, techno-inflected cuts. "Nerves" takes contemporary Euro techno—complete with droning FM synth bells—and fastens it to a heavily swung rhythm, with woozy melodic elements that sway around it like moons orbiting a planet. "Love Potion" is even better, borrowing an "Xstasis"-style organ bassline to a gauzy, floating beat that feels like his own hat-tip to DJ Python's more cerebral productions. Like the best Nick León tracks, it's addictive and catchy, with details like slightly-dragging snare drums adding little morsels of flavour.
Piñeyro's side, on the other hand, is strange even by his standards. "I'm Tired" is both abrasive and lethargic, a monstrous trap beat with a lead that sounds like a ticked-off elephant, guttural grunts and lots of stuttering sounds. It's not just groggy, but downright grumpy. "uwu" offers little respite, this time a Rorschach splash of groaning pads and hand percussion beats that spill out of each bar into near-chaos. Come for Nick León's pitch-perfect techno, stay for Python's lush weirdness.