Review: To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, Blueprint has delved deep into its back catalogue. "Post Traumatic Son", a collaboration between label owner James Ruskin and Karl O'Connor, features three times in remixed form, with DVS1 dropping a deep take, Robert Hood turning the track into an angular, metallic jacker and Marcel Dettmann remodelling it into a grainy Berghain stomper. In as much as dance floor tracks like "Son..." and the coruscating, gnarly rhythm of Outline's "Encounter" have defined the label since the start, so too does its more abstract work. A shadow of textured sound looms over Ruskin's "Correction Centre A"; Samuel Kerridge's "Operation Neptune" is a trip into the world of grungy electronics, while Lakker's "Static & Amp" fuses haunting vocals with a hissing, humming groove.
Review: Love Love has delivered a varied range of music since it emerged on the digital market in 2008 and Lakker maintain the label's bass-leaning output with the Deathmask EP. The sluggish weight heard throughout their earlier material for Blueprint reinforces "LF9", while snares and staccato white noise strafe the track's arrangement, and forlorn sythns and sombre horns add a tonal musicality. The title track sees Lakker draw inspiration from Aphex Twin through the frenetic pattering of static sound, fractured sythns and placid atmospherics. "Preset Numb" sees Lakker deliver some spooky rave music, with a trippy synth line that sounds like a ghoulish version of what Major Lazer might produce, while "Default Numb" sees a kitchen drawer full of percussive elements and bit crushed keys add a childish and playful shake to a track coated in heavy reverb.
Review: The reason why Dublin-based duo Lakker has attracted a lot of attention is due to the fact that they sound genuinely different. As "Mustard Crying" demonstrates, they are unafraid of dropping a track consisting mainly of beats that sound like someone falling down a flight of stairs and loads of noisy feedback. "Ciar" is only slightly more palatable and revolves around a sludgy bass and walls of screeching noise. But Lakker also have a softer side and even thought they frame it against an itchy, scratchy minimal groove, "Summer Rains" has a fragile beauty to it, its eerie synths feeling like steam rising from the ground after a brief spell of rain on a hot day.
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