Over his preceding ‘Mermaid’ and ‘Gargoyle’ EPs, Manchester-based electronic producer Damu has spent much of this year securing a position as a name to watch alongside the more hyped likes of Zomby and Hudson Mohawke, his neon-synth strewn productions drawing equally from house, grime, dubstep and RNB. This highly anticipated debut album on Keysound ‘Unity’ certainly doesn’t disappoint, with the twelve tracks collected here seeing Damu seemingly constantly two steps ahead of the listener as he seamlessly shifts between styles in unpredictable fashion. There’s a noticeably shimmering and angelic feel on display particularly towards the first half of the tracklisting, with ‘Breathless’ sending crisp house snares and handclaps gliding against rainshowers of bright twinkling synths and echoing, cut-up female pop vocals, the slow bleed in of distorted synth textures adding gorgeously melancholic undertones, before ‘After Indigo’ scatters bleeping synth tones over a tight flexing backdrop of skittering grime rhythms that sits in similar territory to the likes of LV, scattershot bursts of female RNB vocals peeking out against the background swell of synth drones and icy 808 toms.
While the sense creeps in that this is a collection more geared towards blissful headphone wanders than the dancefloor (something perhaps borne out by the more abstracted brief segues that bookend several of the tracks here), there’s still a heavy bass presence on display here, with ‘Ridin’ The Hype’ placing Trim’s tales of nocturnal London against a wobbling backdrop of clicking snares and cavernous drops that smoothly shifts from garage-centred house rhythms into moody dubstep without missing a beat. A consistently inspired debut album from an artist already achieving greatness this early into his career.
Chris Downton
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