- The piano virtuoso goes Miami bass.
- For a minute there, Afriqua, AKA Adam Parker, seemed to be charting a straight path through the minimal world. He moved to London from the US in the late '00s to study piano at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music but ended up skipping class to party at fabric. Naturally, he moved to Berlin, started making his own tunes and, before you know it, Raresh was rinsing his records. With that start, Parker could've easily coasted in the Rominimal jetstream, floating between Bucharest and Ibiza. But instead, with the release of 2019's debut album Colored, his focus shifted. There was groove-laden house and techno, for sure, but also soul and funk, as Parker dived into a wider spectrum of Black music. His latest EP, MAXI SINGLE, carries on that exploration. Turning his attention to the 305, Parker goes for the sleaze and trunk-rattling heft of Miami bass—on a new label run by Tomorrowland, of all places.
The Miami bass influences are clear from the first wobbly wiggle on opener "OBJCT FNTSY"—every bassline here would work on an early Pandisc 12-inch. Fat and chunky, these are pure 80s throwbacks, but only two of the tracks, "XPRSS YRSLF" and "DGTS" have the usual electro 808s, plus lines like "You want to study physics, I freelance chemistry / You girl gave me her digits, I gave her my IG" to really hit the homage home. Elsewhere Parker adds house and techno flourishes. "OBJCT FNTSY," for example, builds tension between a soulful disco sample and acid squelches, while "LVSCK" has the swing of a prime-time house groover.
The past few years have shown that Parker is something of a musical wunderkind. During the pandemic, he hosted livestreams from his home studio, cranking out everything from dubstep to G-funk to the sort of velvety house tunes he could seemingly write with his eyes shut. But, importantly, he's also a scholar of Black music. Last year for Ableton, for example, he put together a five part series titled "Principles of Black Music." This love of the history and future of Black music isn't just an academic exercise, though. As Parker shows on MAXI SINGLE, he's still looking for new corners of the Black music cosmos to explore—and then making himself at home as usual.
Tracklist01. OBJCT FNTSY
02. XPRSS YRSLF
03. LVSCK
04. DGTS