Whether it’s to keep their brand strong or just to act as a mindfuck to obsessive ravers, more and more artists these days are operating under a growing number of aliases and enigmatic side projects.
Conspiracies surrounding who Burial may or may not be are at times on a level with 9/11 speculatory narratives. Weiss of course is another smoke and mirrors producer and there are countless others trying to build hype, switch styles or simply massage their (alter) egos.
So up steps the latest man of mystery, Aden. The press release that accompanied his forthcoming EP ‘Four’, teases “heads who don’t know will have a fun time following the clues and playing ‘guess who’.” We can’t really be arsed playing games, we’re quite happy to bypass the whole thing and just take the music on its own merit.
One thing we are willing to take a punt on is that the title for the EP is taken from the number of tracks included. It’s out on Jimmy Edgar’s Ultramajic imprint and follows a stream of well-received offerings, most notably from label-head Edgar himself. Aden’s style isn’t too dissimilar to the kind of “house-fuelled, techno-touched” electronica that Jimmy Edgar has mastered (think his remix of Darling Farrah’s ‘Body’ as one example). The delivery is remarkably refreshing.
The first track is ‘Part of Me’ and it’s the perfect pace-setter for the EP as a whole. A sparse 4×4 beat with building vocal flickers and euphoric builds that drop into rolling, swollen basslines and synth stabs that puncture the flabby sub-bass in a sublime musical juxtaposition. The whole track is incredibly well put-together and the tension saturates the mix and falls out into a super-hype blowout, bursting for floor-time.
Like the top track, ‘Real’ brings the pitched-up vocal snips in straight off and pads swell in and around the shrill voice, this time clearing to a much more minimal composition. Almost eerie, the track is an off-key cut and a tale of two halves. The second half sees perc, sidesticks and hi’s flood the mid to high end. Despite the strobing sidesticks, Real is probably less floor-ready than Part of Me but the track does its job nonetheless.
All four tracks have a similar feel and whoever Aden is he has honed his sound in such a way that even in just one EP he has a quartet of cuts from the same fine cloth. ‘Work’ again features a bullish bass and vocal licks with percussive flak filling the spacious, roomy mix. Jaw-clenching tension is relieved with such solid and evolving sounds, Jimmy Edgar must be licking his lips.
Last up is ‘Say and Do’. There’s not much I can say (or do) about this track that I haven’t already attributed to the other three tracks. I guess the best I can offer is to describe how strikingly similar it is to the others – the sounds used and the cranking and releasing of pressure, monstrous, sub-heavy basslines and a business-like demeanour.
We were surprised by the power and consistency of Four so forgive us if we’ve come across a little flittish. Listening to the tracks back-to-back feels like necking a double-shot espresso and leaves a big hole that now needs filling. In fact, think we’ll just pull it to the top and play again.
Four is out on the 14th of March on digital only. Feel free to let us know if you think you’ve cracked the Aden enigma and we’ll happily give you a shout out on the site! ; )
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/137059136″ params=”color=7000ff&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
