'blackrock!'/Bouti [Review]
Sydney net label ULTRAVIRUS and French producer Bouti gift the world a masterpiece in plunderphonics mayhem, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.
Picture this: someone is on the toilet at kick ons, crouched over gremlin-like. Scrolling through Instagram stories – it’s all their serotonin-deficient brain is capable of at this moment in time – they stumble across DJ sets from the previous night, blissfully unaware that they are connected to a Bluetooth speaker. Sound bites of an entire city’s collective night pummel the living room. Someone strums flamenco on the couch, meanwhile, and a DJ rocks out in front of five friends, fist pumping aggressively. To your average listener, this is best way to describe the aural Armageddon that is ‘blackrock!’ It’s a thoroughly ULTRAVIRUS release – a Jurassic-sized 32 minute ‘single’ by Marseille-based producer Bouti.
Bouti pumps this musical spiral through some beefy mixing and mastering skills, leading us down a subterranean rabbit hole into plunderphonics. Bouti’s splicing and plundering of sounds, which range from psycore bass to kidcore squeaks, results in an experience so disorientating that it becomes meditative. Nonetheless, unlike the experience of listening to someone skip through a 4 hour soundcloud set, Bouti makes sure every beat, every guitar strum and every chiptune chirp lands perfectly in an impossibly dense rhythmic grid.
Despite the utter chaos of genre mashing, the track still hits with surgical precision and cleanliness. Each synth line, kick, pad and bass comes through with definition and punch, making it a track for whimsical DJs, open-minded dance floors and car stereo jams. I can’t say there is a single moment of dullness or indecisiveness in this ADHD wormhole – no ambient interludes or predictable breakdowns; suffice to say, this is easily the least predictable piece of music I’ve ever heard. Whenever I felt like the chaos of it all was wearing thin, blackrock! would turn to a new vibe, hitting the spot each time.
Mysterious jungle-temple-videogame synths follow high energy gabber kicks. Groovy bongo drums follow trancey crescendos in a meticulous call and response pattern. Much like how gabber is defined by distinctive kick sounds, psytrance by its kick/bass triplets and schranz by its metal pot clanking bass, Bouti’s breed of plunderphonics is like a new genre in which the definitive beat structure is making sure every beat is a completely different genre.
In true plunderphonics spirit, Bandcamp purchases come with a sample pack which includes samples used in blackrock! and 9 DJ tools for total club domination, making it easier than ever to rip, splice, remix and murder the pop songs of yesteryear. Also available is a limited-edition four panel CD, designed by s1m0nc3ll0, with collage album art that perfectly captures the ULTRAVIRUS aesthetic. There’s enough kitsch, cartoonish, cyber-punk imagery to burn your eyeballs.
Blackrock! will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a novel release which tosses away the rule book. It’s rare to see a record label based in Australia pushing this extremity of experimentation, but it’s reflective of a Australian dance music scene increasingly defined by experimental music and art festivals such as Soft Centre and Unsound. It’s a welcome breeze of change.
Words by Woody Rolph, aka Autogenesis.
Album art by s1m0nc3ll0.
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