The past year has been a year to remember for Blawan. Throughout 2011 he steadily carved out a reputation for producing infectious, hard-hitting dance music. Whether it’s in re-working Brandy’s ‘I Wanna Be Down’ on his breakthrough white label track ‘Getting Me Down’, or producing pulsating techno in his ‘Bohla EP‘ for R&S, he’s seen his Midas touch become one of the most coveted in the business.
And so we come to his latest release, the ‘Peaches’ EP on legendary Dutch label Clone, and one that in their words focuses on Blawan’s recently uncovered penchant for techno or more specifically “phat techno stabs, harsh basslines and crazy bouncing beats that bring back that energy in techno … expect tracks that scream for some active old school DJing”. Last seen on the Moodyman-sampling ‘What You Do With What You Have’, Blawan’s real proficiency lies in his use of dense percussiveness as the backbone to his tracks without it ever feeling forced or heavy handed.
Thankfully on ‘Coronation’, Blawan continues in the same vein as his previous releases, producing a track that is by turns artfully arranged and packed with a sense of joyless abandon through its sprawling yet stately techno layers. On ‘Free Stone’, his blunted beats and cracking, off-kilter snares are balanced out and pushed into more house-orientated territory, morphing into something that retains the former track’s dexterity while upping the four to the floor appeal.
On what appears to be a landmark release among his ever-expanding discography, Blawan continues to showcase a catalogue of production skills, timbral choices, and a sensitive and perceptive ear for texture on subsequent track ‘Melting Flesh’. He dissects the track into another entity before drawing it back together to a cohesive whole with a propulsive bassline. The titular ‘Peaches’ draws the EP to a close with a bang, brimming with shameless gusto and zest, undercut by a thudding, ominous bassline.
In what may have been a daunting prospect for lesser producers, Blawan here provides more evidence that he is currently one of the hottest and most versatile properties on the electronic music circuit, and one who can deftly jump between genres without any sense of displacement or naivety. The future looks bright.