- The strangeness continues to come from Romania. This time, the young producer's name is Dragosh, and he's a 21 year-old jazz and classical lover who spent time composing jazz and classical pieces before he fell in love with Steve Lawler, Villalobos and Johnny D. Put that trio of producers in a blender, in fact, and you might get exactly what comes out on his debut EP for Lawler's VIVa Music imprint: Loopy to the point of distraction, his twittering drum loops are offset by fantastically psychedelic pianos and wind instruments.
The attention to percussion, though, is the main point here: Dragosh puts a little melody into every loop that he drops in the six original tracks on Bea Part of Me ala Villalobos. With Lawler's relentless forward momentum mixed with D's relaxed touch added to the mix, these tracks sway effortlessly despite the intense amount of sound design that clearly went into them. "La Joaca" for example, is basically an honest-to-God jazz track with an inhuman trumpeter providing the pulse—solos and all. And "Maidan"'s hypnotic effect is due to what sounds like a Roma clarinet whiling away in the background.
What sets Dragosh—and fellow countryman Boola—apart from current trends, though, isn't quirky instruments and drum programming that can't exactly be pinned down to house or techno. Instead, it's the rawness with which they're working. The tracks on Bea Part of Me sound alive with the sound of a producer that doesn't quite know what to make of all the possibilities before him—but isn't content to craft something that he's ever heard before. We could use more of that.
Tracklist1. Pe Plaja
2. Aloo Ma Auzi
3. Aloo Ma Auzi (Bearweasel's Linear Drum Edit)
4. Inochi Itai
5. Auzi Date Rog
6. La Joaca
7. Maiden