Playground magazine

The work is piling up on us. The musical inbox is overflowing with fresh plastic, and it looks fit to burst, like a person wearing clothes several sizes too small. Not to mention digital promos, which make moving from one computer folder to another a tougher job than blazing a trail through the Amazon with a machete. The second law of thermodynamics, which states that the amount of entropy in the universe tends to increase over time, becomes painfully real and close to home when we have to use a knife to carve our way through new short-format record releases to separate out the ones that are worth commenting on. A few days ago we offered you a first selection of singles and EPs from this month that were noteworthy. But there is more. Here is a new batch.

What is known about Violetshaped is almost nothing: Violet Poison is supposedly German, although he could just as well be Spanish, and apparently Shapednoise is Italian (he is part of the hard core of Repitch, along with two Neapolitans, Ascion and D. Carbone), but he lives in Berlin. Everything that can be sensed about his identity is what comes from his albums, so far two records on his own label, which have evolved from the cold techno-dub of “Untitled” (2011), signed only by Violet Poison, to the new violent, grainy turn taken at the beginning of the year with “The Great Mother Down The Stairs”, a cavernous, screeching lo-fi slap in the face in which Shapednoise started to get in on the action. The label’s third title is the EP of remixes of this last 12”, and what gives it added value is the collection of guests, perfectly chosen for the occasion: Roly Porter covers “The Lord Won’t Forget” with a mantle of expressionistic synthetic textures, Vatican Shadow adds more drum and more (bad) vibes to a “Delusory Parasitosis” which seems here like a shot of James Ruskin, and Kangding Ray deactivates the fury but adds tension with his techno rereading containing intermittent breaks. It sends a chill up and down your spine.

Trimbal, better known as Trim, but also as Trimski or Taliban Trim, has been the most unpredictable vocalist on the grime scene for years, a man who uses his vocal chords like a ventriloquist and who bends or destroys them unspeakably to give voice to different characters. His four “Soulfood” mixtapes – which took him from 2007 to 2009 – consolidated him as an odd bird at a time when grime was shamelessly skipping down the garden path in the direction marked for it by Dizzee’s bejewelled finger. Perhaps that’s why he sort of fell by the wayside, like a cult figure misunderstood at the time of the grime resurgence, and one can count the number of times he appeared as a featured artist over the following years on one hand: just a few releases by Riva Starr, Mark Pritchard, Dusk + Blackdown and Becoming Real. Now, when people thought he had just about retired from the game, comes “Confidence Boost” – a very appropriate title, given the context. It is re-launching him with the guarantee of distribution that R&S Records always promises; the same is true of the double remix that he gives Harmonimix, which is known to be James Blake’s more spectral parallel project. The redhead plays with Trim’s voice on “Confidence Boost” as if it were an elastic band, making it sound like a squirrel or a lion, high and low, among overloaded synths that saturate the entire auditory spectrum, as if they were an aeroplane taking off. On “Saying”, he adds beats and places himself aesthetically in the type of experimental grime put out by the LHF collective, but without giving up the toxicity that is presaged on the A-side. The release gets hallucinatory.