Spirals of blaring noise echo as though chained to the bottom of some long-forgotten cistern. A voice, far removed from normal diction, barks syllables in a harsh, lurching cadence. What remains of regular meter exists only as a log of controlled chaos—fetid, cavernous rhythms that batter a crumbling foundation. It all sounds ready to break apart. British producer Blawan holds it together on “The GL Lights,” the opening track of SickElixir. He extracts techno from within dense strata of mechanized grit, maneuvering through sharp edges and switchbacks until the mangled frame contorts into a new picture. The aesthetic is startling; his corroded dance music, steeped in hellish glossolalia, conjures a vast, violent, and unknowable world.
It hasn’t always been like this. When charting his development, the artist born Jamie Roberts recalls feverish after-school drum practice and a fascination with the metallic shrieks of an industrial mincer that soundtracked work as a maggot farmer in South Yorkshire. In his earliest releases, tidy post-dubstep singles for labels like the legendary Hessle Audio, this fascination manifested as mechanistic perfection: skeletal grooves dominated by surgically arranged percussion. As his experience grew, his work underwent a sea change. The beats became noisier, grittier, more organic, without compromising the slick arrangements. By the time of his first album, 2018’s Wet Will Always Dry, many of Roberts’ now-perennial fascinations were beginning to calcify: “Tasser,” for instance, propelled its eroded techno pulse forward with a throaty digital rasp. A new poetics of distortion was taking shape.
Seven years on, the leering, all-encompassing grime of SickElixir melds dozens of Roberts’ subsequent discoveries and revelations into a brutish, unhinged gestalt; its clamorous swagger makes “Tasser” look like a curio. Tracks groan and caterwaul as though wounded, cataloging a vast library of scabbed-over synth leads and guttural vocal hooks. The sound rides an uncanny middle between the scratchy, live-wire jam sessions of Syclops and the kitschy throat-singing augments of Ummet Ozcan. Roberts operates with finesse, finding a distinct place in the mix for each element in his tapestry. The yo-yoing volume dynamics in lead single “NOS”—from ruthless, blown-out bass to a clipped whisper—are at once organic and painstakingly contrived, compressing opposed timbres into a continuous, unified eruption.
