- A late-night road trip with the dial stuck between post-punk and jungle.
- For the first five years of Benedikt Frey's production career, he seemed to be casting about for a vibe. He put out some excellent 12-inches on outlets as varied as Nous'klaer Audio, Mule Musiq and Hivern Discs, touching on everything from deep house to dub techno (plus an unreal Biggie flip). But somewhere in the mid-'10s, Frey finally found his sound by taking a range of post-punk and industrial references and mixing them with techno and electro. "Solver," from his latest LP Fastlane, is this sound at its Platonic ideal. Loose new beat drums and a vocoder dance over a barrage of whipping 303s that wouldn’t be out of place in a Mike Servito set. The rest of Fastlane runs with this fusion of the darker ends of the electronic '80s (and early '90s) with contemporary club music.
Frey's love of the angst and eyeliner of the decadent '80s is well documented, particularly on last year's mini-album 1987. On Fastlane, he takes his devotion to a higher level. "Trick Shot" is vintage Cybotron-style electro, both poppy and sinister in equal measures, while "Element" is like goth hip-hop. The synths and occasional guitar lick could be Skinny Puppy while the slowed breakbeat has a real b-boy groove to it. Both "Industry" and "1337" are proper post-punk bangers. The former features a campy organ line, while the latter is a blackened piece of synth pop à la Front 242.
What sets Fastlane apart from Frey's previous releases is the influence of his other main love: the UK hardcore continuum. He's put out some jungle and drum & bass tunes (he's also cited a classic Metalheadz set as his favourite mix of all time), but here he more fully weaves British bass culture into the industrial, electro and new wave influences of his usual work. Opener "Habits" takes electro drum programming and adds dubby guitar chords and a Bristol-style bassline. He conjures a similar effect when he and O-Wells unleash their inner junglists on "Silverblade," with chords that search the horizon like wandering fog lights over a rhythm that could've been lifted from a Skanna release. Even on a track like "Move Me," with INIT collaborator Nadia D'Alò, it starts as a rough and ready acid banger tightly wound 808s, but the hardcore-ish chords conjure up an orbital rave.
As the title suggests, Fastlane is Frey's take on the road trip album. Listening to the record is a bit like imagining Burial's night bus sojourns—only a decade or two earlier, bringing home punters from London's famed The Batcave, where Nick Cave and Siouxsie would hang out. But instead of abandoned city blocks, Fastlane opts for empty freeways speeding to even emptier suburbs. The album is 74 minutes of combustible intensity (which is fitting, given the liner notes which could have been lifted from J.G. Ballard's infamous novel Crash). It's an unrelenting listen that seamlessly weaves a loving homage to two distinct corners of dance music's past.
Tracklist01. Habits
02. Fast Lane
03. Crank
04. Move Me feat. Nadia_D'alò
05. Solver
06. Element
07. Gasoline
08. Industry
09. Trick Shot
10. Silverblade feat. O-Wells
11. Lost (Again)
02. 1337