- Pangaea tours UK dance music genres, from garage to happy hardcore, with a sense of humour and brilliant, dance floor-destroying precision.
- Be it deep, percussive dubstep or punchy techno, Kevin McAuley has always been the straight-shooting head of the Hessle Audio hydra. But "Installation," the lead single from the London producer's second album—and one of this summer's indisputable anthems—carries itself with a newfound playfulness we haven't really seen from him before. Ebullient vocals are chopped into a nonsensical chant over impish, buzzing synths and a tech house beat that could have been left in baggage claim on a flight to Ibiza. It was the perfect setup for Changing Channels, an album that takes McAuley's deft touch to route-one house, breakbeat techno and happy hardcore.
McAuley has been turning his attention to warmer hues as of late, starting with 2020's "Like This," a garage space-hopper with regal strings and belting house vocals. He followed up with last year’s "Still Flowing Water," which paired gleefully buoyant techno with theatrical hits of disco strings. Changing Channels is the logical end to this transitional phase, sprucing up the darkness and negative space of his older music and allowing the grooves to take centre stage.
Even with its many left turns, Changing Channels sticks to a formula: each track presents an idea and then adds an often surprising counterweight. It happens at the midpoint of the title track, where it diverts to a sedate deep house-flavoured daydream that takes a prolonged effort to snap out of. The stormy "If" fades in a theremin-like bass synth that plays a warbling dirge, as if the track was growing weary of its own intensity.
None of this would land if not for McAuley's almost ruthless efficiency, leaving just enough room for a little madness. On “Installation, the "boom boom esso esso!" vocal sample has the infectious brattiness of the late '00s electro (clash or house) era of Uffie, M.I.A. and the Ian Carey Project’s "Get Shaky," all rolled into one.
The album features plenty of these mainstream-leaning dance sounds that Hessle Audio was once an alternative to. "Hole Away," with its garage house stride, square bassline and "make me lose my, my mind" vocals that hook around the groove, could have been a release on Defected. The helter skelter descent of the bassline of "The Slip" reminds me of Dennis Ferrer's remix of Fish Go Deep's "The Cure and the Cause." It's like seeing your typically housebound mate suddenly become the life of the party—at first, you wonder what's gotten into them, but then you can't help but cheer them on.
"If" is where Pangaea starts to apply his rhythmic inventiveness onto the album. The rocky breakbeats charge up and hit like a Kamehameha, putting pressure on a yearning vocal chop ("If you love me too / I think I still love you too"). "Squid" is the most contemplative track, with its cascading synth that echoes and makes the UK funky drums feel unusually languid—a sonic sleight of hand. No matter how experimental McAuley gets, though, nothing is cold-hearted. Romantic keys linger underneath the track and when they're left exposed at the end of the track, they lift the crowd twenty feet above the dance floor.
At seven tracks—one less than his 2012 Release EP—McAuley's second album can feel like it arrives at the finish just as you start to settle in. But in that time, he reaffirms everything he does best in a totally different playing field. Four Tet, playing big room tech house and mainstream tracks—even deadmau5—has been indirectly advocating for DJs to shed the idea of "guilty pleasures" that dance music fans can be too self-serious about sometimes. As "Bad Lines" closes out Changing Channels with flanger-heavy happy hardcore, it’s clear that Pangaea has joined the movement in his own way.
Tracklist01. Installation
02. Hole Away
03. If
04. The Slip
05. Changing Channels
06. Squid
07. Bad Lines