- Racing, restless and raw—Angel Rocket are a leading light in Accidental Meetings’ expanding sonic universe.
- The Bristol-via-London-via-Brighton label Accidental Meetings has a meandering discography that makes it devilishly difficult to describe. Its compilations, for example, touch on a post-Livity Sound style broken techno, but its albums and events don't at all. Attendees turn up to their nights and leave either disappointed by this supposed inconsistency (as this letter shows) or pleasantly surprised (as a manager I spoke to at Cafe OTO sounded following one of their gigs this year).
UK duo Angel Hunt and Peter Rocket—Angel Rocket—fit this follow-your-nose nature brilliantly. They’re the first artists to have two releases on the label and their second one, 2, steers Accidental Meetings back to the dance floor after a recent slew of esoteric IDM, dub and folk music. This one races between broken techno, reggaeton and jungle with all the pent-up energy of an 11 year-old on a sugar high.
Even the name of the first track. "Atrium Rush," sounds like the sort of game a Year 6 class would make up on a rainy, indoor play day, its skittish percussion and punchy synths getting across an excitable and fidgety angst. "Metro Hexx" is equally restless. Not content to stick to its reggaeton stomp, it squeezes in a few more hats per bar to finish as a jungle tune. And "Rydeen Thermals"’s glossy Autotuned vocals bring an unusually languid (but welcome) contrast to the track’s turbocharged, Avalon Emerson-style techno.
There’s something quite random about the ending of "Rydeen Thermals," too. Church bells ring out in its dying moments, only just loud enough to hear. The same can be said of the half-whispered words on "Aerglass Springs": they sound like the bubbly plosives of Facejacker’s Brian Badonde trying to tell us something over waves of sub bass. Those are the oddest ones, but the EP is rife with unexpected textures if you listen out for them: pan pipe-esque synths on "Atrium Rush," long wispy notes like wind blowing through cracks on "Aerglass Springs," smashing glass on "Rydeen Thermals."
It all sounds improvised and slapdash, like the duo haven’t laboured over where to take their music and instead just went with wherever it was going. It reminds me of the video game Katamari Damacy where you have to bundle up earthly bric-a-brac into a big enough ball that it eventually turns into a star. It’s a speedy, chaotic game that’s heaps of fun and disarmingly unique—all the same things I would say of Angel Rocket, who are turning out to be a flagship project for a label of boundless tastes.
Tracklist01. Atrium Rush
02. Aerglass Springs feat. iPrasanth
03. Metro Hexx
04. Rydeen Thermals