- Mbielu
- Bionic Marabou
Continuing on from the exemplary Shy One and Silvestre EPs this year, label co-founder BD1982 shares a two-track single on Diskotopia just in time for a hazy summer reconnaissance. Having recently relocated back to Tokyo, both Mbielu and Bionic Marabou reflect the familiar but also the uncharted circumstances Jersey-born producer Brian Durr has been immersed in as of late. Taking cues from a notion of an amalgamous animal kingdom where both cryptids and studied species alike share an equal measure of reverence, both tracks on display here represent the vast known/unknown as well as an impartially skewed version of the natural world.
Mbielu derives it’s name from the cryptid Mbielu-mbielu-mbielu, a Stegosaurus-like creature native to the Likouala region within the Republic of the Congo. Waves of psychedelic digi-chemtrails wash over densely layered thickets of shuffling percussion and kick drums. Live backchat echoes like incantatory ancient prayer through leaves of pixelated snare drums, all carried by a primal groove akin to a prehistoric beast trudging through overgrown analog moss.
The curious textural plume of Bionic Marabou is due in part to its live recording and mixdown; awash with idiosyncratic cracks, fissures and sample-overlay artifacts. Decayed, hovering dread undercuts a club-ready bounce that reflects the marabou itself: a beautiful yet imposing avian capable of inspiring equal measures of awe and dismay.
As always with BD1982’s unique sound, it’s impossible to pigeon-hole it into one genre - Mbielu sounds like a dancehall track spliced with shattered UK garage fragments and peeled warped techno, hastily taped together and thrown into a spinning candy-floss machine loaded with sand instead of sugar; Bionic Marabou - a VHS recording of that happening, played in reverse on a constantly melting TV. File next to other releases like that in your collection.