Bleep

London based enigma U has a devotion to texturising the club’s contents. Since first arriving on Phantasy Sound in 2014, they have lingered at the edges of a dazed and hazy dancefloor with a curious crosspollination of styles and sounds. Records for ManMakeMusic, Technicolour, and Where To Now? constantly morph and blend, seeming to come from a hardcore ravers’ paradise and an abstract murky dream sequence all at once. Following their last release for the label in 2021, U is back with another EP that pulls and sculpts dance music into metamorphic forms.

‘Parade’ is a beat odyssey in every sense, a bubbling cauldron of synths and solid rhythms conjuring spells through every twist and turn. The setting is filled with moss and condensation, with a wind farm of shifting, shuffling percussion, before a four to the floor sends the track into an etheric realm. Flashes of revelatory ambient sonics glide underneath the sci fi / fantasy soundscape. The cauldron's concoctions bubble over with springy acid stabs as the track unfolds into an arcane dancefloor quaker, then descends into the crashing depths for its last hurrah.

Meanwhile, electrified atoms smash into each other in the digital hardcore lab experiment of ‘Watchers’. Frazzled frenetic synths are guided by thumps and low frequency purrs into a rainforest of chirps and trickles, then stripped of the ambience for a minimalist of classic club sounds completely reconfigured. All this makes for a hefty pairing of tracks that set the floor on fire and then disappear into the smoke and vapour.