Naco
Metta
Fever AM
For the past decade, some of the most twisted bass music out there has been championed by 85acid. The Kyoto-based label sits somewhere between the sub-heavy weight of Timedance and the weirdo-core of labels like SUED. and Acido, but adds in enough 303s to have you reaching for the Tums. The strongest releases have come from head honcho Naco, a former breaks protege who went down the rabbit hole, turning jungle, dubstep, techno and everything in between into what sound like jagged transmissions from an alien club.
For his newest release, Naco has been recruited by fellow bass champions Mor Elian and Rhyw, who’ve tasked him with putting together an EP for their always excellent Fever AM imprint. By Naco’s standards, Metta is practically a straight-up techno record. Get rid of the gurgling, didgeridoo-esque vocal on “GP,” and the track wouldn’t sound totally out of place in a Subzero-era Ben Klock set. But there is still plenty of strangeness at work. The melody on the dubsteppy title track sounds like the coils of a jack-in-the-box shooting off in a million directions and the synths on “Hepp” are akin to field recordings from a dystopian, cybernetic swamp where AI bullfrogs duet one with one another. The best of the bunch is “Alt,” which recalls the controlled chaos of Rhyw’s “Honey Badger,” but also has a slight swing in its drum programming, adding a bit of funkiness to the frenzied lead lines that already bounce like flubber. In short, Metta is an excellent EP that shines a light on one of Kyoto’s finest.
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