Never one to turn the volume knob in an anti-clockwise direction, Maelstrom’s Different Train, full of grinding spokes and bouncy percussion flying off the live rail as if pinged there by pinball flippers, buys a one-way ticket of tech-house whose vigour overcomes the heap of squeaks, scrapes and whizzes flying past. A mixture of a bullet train and a rickety old tube jumping off the tracks with the hydraulics of a super excitable low-rider.
Techno espionage tactician Embush, primed for dead of night and where dance moves are actually shimmying through the undergrowth on your knees and elbows in camouflage really quickly, is a serious hammering of chords/a hammering of serious chords that intensify as the mission slash nightmare unfolds. Manning a battering ram where you daren’t fail the polygraph test it slams into you, Malestrom lays it on the line to weaklings that they either go in or go home.
Outta Congo drops down low for a half-step rhythm, electro-bass smacks splintering into something loud, brash and cocky but also for the first time in the EP, party-perfect, the closing dubstep-flavoured segment included. Meaning that you’re getting an earful of the good stuff, while the dancefloor remains beamingly up for it. Root Knife messes about with samples of Dr Dre’s The Next Episode and the stinger klaxon from Ironside – keep with it - into another shoulder-dip on the B-more side captaining a full on bass whoomp to leave categorisers befuddled. Along with some other diced up snippets and vocal titbits caught in a slyly slippery manoeuvre, Maelstrom’s digital bonus track finishes as an upfront bass music exponent and shows the French noisenik in varied, ever boisterous form.