It is an honour and a pleasure to present Diffusion Mix #2 by Austin's Legit. A member of the Wabi Sabi collective and producer of one of my personal favourite songs of the year, Legit exists in the thriving Texas scene that, as #2 demonstrates, continues to evade boundaries. It is obviously centred around trap music, but provides so much more: where a mix by Flosstradamus or Diplo, for example, focuses on all the bang of trap (and while bang is still forefront in this mix), Legit engages with the ebb and flow of the mix as a whole - sections without bass, dipping into scenes America-wide and sounds world-wide. Like clicking through radio channels, as the beginning and end suggest. From trap anthems like Harlem Shake to Cedaa to Abel to Cocobass records, Legit surveys contemporary US bass music with a fine ear for anything that'll make you lean. Starting with some real trap shit, moving into dubsteppy territory by way of the UK techno sounds (think Blawan and Objekt, but replace the pounding 4/4 or dubstep bassweight with the south's boom-bap) and finally blossoming in full, peaking glory.
The mix also reflects the trap scene's, on a wider scale, obsession with internety murkiness, kitsch soundbites and watermarks. It switches from the minimal = maximal aesthetic of the likes of TNGHT to the schizophrenic, violently restless likes of LDFD in an instant, full of the sounds of cultural deconstruction and decay. In the mix Legit is keenly aware of the effect of these bleeps and bloops - the ecstasy of the barrage, the intrigue of their absence. And thus we have a perfectly balanced mix- between restraint and overload, between minimalism and maximalism, between sparsity and density. Brilliantly, this is still full volume, 1 a.m. music and it's a free download so get listening!
No comments:
Post a Comment