Adam Beyer – Don’t Go [Drumcode]

Adam Beyer continues to push techno’s boundaries with diverse elements while staying true to the beat, with his new EP ‘Don’t Go’, out 11th October.

Picking up where he left off with previous acclaimed solo EP ‘Ghost Kiss’ and his recent knockout debut Vintage Culture collaboration, the Swedish producer and Drumcode label boss delivers a two tracker of epic proportions, marked by a creative use of vocal samples and vocal processing, creating an extra layer of rampant power which can be both spacey and machine-like, yet organically human.

‘Don’t Go’: the title track kicks off with spacey elements of hoover and doppler FX, maintaining an assertive, demanding forward thrust throughout but soon dominated by the vocal sample, a two-line Afro-vibe chorus of mixed voices processed as now riff, now melody, now building through the big breakdown into a huge drop. The call and response pattern of the sample is compulsively engaging, triumphant and incessantly hooky while lending an organic, atavistic feel skilfully enmeshed with the percussion.

‘Tool Of Thought’: more of a futuristic flavour this time, with a complex percussive attack of clacking beat, hissing hi-hats, metallic bass and hoover notes like sirens upping the dangerous, unsettling ambiance. Beyer’s recent experimenting with vocoders here creates a deep, dark vocal. No chance of not dancing to this.

Not content to rest on his considerable laurels, techno king Beyer keeps on evolving, and the responses during his current tour of major festivals worldwide make it clear fans old and new are more than ready for this particular iteration of his brilliance.