- The Detroit producer's debut album rekindles Planet Mu's '00s character with its hodgepodge of fast-paced styles and unruly energy.
- Detroit-born producer DJ GIRL was obviously thrilled to have her debut album Hellworld released on Mike Paradinas's Planet Mu imprint. She was also a bit surprised—she thought it would be too weird for them. Which is fair, because Hellworld is weird. It's a dance music album so crammed with ideas, ranging from Detroit techno to electro to footwork to breakcore, that it's impossible to describe it with just a few terms. But there are parallels with the label's output. Breakcore, for example, is a genre Planet Mu knows well thanks to Venetian Snares, whose album Songs About My Cats rivals Hellworld for kookiness. When you consider that DJ GIRL has been a Jeff Mills fanatic since she was a teenager, and that Paradinas took the name for his label from Carl Craig's Planet E, then there's a glove somewhere—and it's a snug fit.
Still, Hellworld was not an LP that was made for fitting in. "I'm a rebel without cause," raps Malick McFly on "Gallery," which is about being high on shrooms in an art gallery. After a few plodding verses over an electro beat, a barrage of rough-and-tumble drums rallies everything into a hard techno frenzy. When McFly's words return, they're high pitched and have to squeeze through the now congested, almost ballroom track. It feels unhinged, and that feeling runs through all of Hellworld down to a granular level. Every kick on "Groover" sounds close to blowing your speakers, "So Hot"'s bassline burns through its electro rhythm like a blue flame through a gauze, and the more the chiptune synths swell on "When U Touch Me," the more frazzled and frayed they get. It might be dance music, but it's got the turbulent and rugged edge of a punk record.
It's also funny in a silly, slapstick kind of way. "Get Down," for example, sounds like it borrowed Street Fighter's Ken to repeat the title over and over and over, as if he were spamming hadoukens. Sure, it's a bit nagging at first—like Jana Rush's "Clown," off her Dark Humor EP—but a cartoonish outburst of "I don't understand why don't they just eat brioche?!" lifts it out of this locked groove and loosens it up.
Something similar happens with the robotic voice ordering you to "shake your ass" on the atmospheric electro of "Technician.". Fun twists like these are commonplace over at DJ GIRL's cooperative label EAT DIS. She and her friends regularly challenge each other to make a beat in under two hours using sample packs curated by one of the group. And like FACT's old Against The Clock series, the result is far from slapdash. It's a raw exhibition of talent. DJ GIRL and her peers can now all make music with an ease and playfulness where they get across personality without ever sounding forced.
It's one thing to imitate a genre and make something that sounds nice, but it's a completely different and rare thing to take a myriad of reference points and seamlessly move between them whilst bringing your character to the fore—especially with dance music. How do you stick to Detroit techno's structure while also showing that you've got a random sense of humour? Only a true fan could do that—the work of someone who's put all those years spent sharing and listening to music on chat rooms, radio and DIY shows and packed it into an XXXL record that bulges out even past the biggest of Planet Mu's misfits.
Tracklist01. Get Down
02. Opp Pack Hittin feat. Malick McFly
03. Technician
04. Lucky
05. Gallery feat. Malick McFly
06. So Hot
07. When U Touch Me feat. Lighght
08. Groover