- 2020s-style mnml from a rising star.
- If dance music operates in cycles, then conditions are ripe for the return of minimal, or, rather mnml. Think about it for a second. The European variant on the classic Robert Hood sound was a response to the club hedonism of the late '90s, when trance and progressive had become a bit too over the top for some. Labels like Minus, Playhouse and Poker Flat Recordings offered an antidote, stripping dance music down into its component parts. If I were a gambling man, I'd be tempted to read the tea leaves: Ricardo Villalobos is remixing DJ Python, labels like Limousine Dream are putting out Frankfurt school tracks, and, as Joe Delon observed on Instagram the other day, tracks like Audion's "Mouth to Mouth" are getting serious airtime all over again.
The A-side of Shyam Anand's latest EP under his Snad alias, Bootlickerz, offers a tantalising taste of what mnml might sound like in the 2020s. The title track is Chicago house by way of Bar25. It's a lean drum track with the raw intensity of Windy City jack, but with the day-drunk swing, playful pulses of subbass and squishy synths of Perlon records. "Goobernatorial Candidacy" takes things in a more microhouse direction, with shimmering tidepools of dubby melodies and bleepy synths. These tracks are minimal and airy, but they don't feel overly nostalgic. The other two cuts are just as funky, hewing closer to deep house with their plaintive chord progressions. Still, lurking in the shadows on both "Butt Heads" and "Per Savour" are the robotic chirps synonymous with old school mnml.
Anand has made a name for himself within the sort of circles that hang out around Club der Visionaere on summer afternoons. Splitting his time between Berlin and Philadelphia, he's released 12-inches on hipster European labels like Minibar and Pleasure Zone, but also flexed his US roots with records on Chez Damier's Courtesy Of Balance Recordings. He's a rising star in this crate-digging corner of clubland and regardless of whether we're at the precipice of a full-on mnml revival, Bootlickerz is an EP of slick house that'll work at just about any party this summer.
Tracklist01. Bootlickerz
02. Goobernatorial Candidacy
03. Per Savour
04. Butt Heads