Parisian digital artist and producer Raoul Sinier has previously released two albums and a smattering of EPs as Ra through an impressive selection of labels including Coredump, Planet Mu and Sublight, but this latest EP on the Berlin-based Ad Noiseam label Huge Samurai Radish sees him abandoning the retracted alias in favour of his full given name. Intended to act as an appetiser for Sinier’ upcoming third album Brain Kitchen, Huge Samurai Radish in many senses comes across more like a full album, running in at 12 tracks in total; with seven new tracks featured alongside five remixes of the title track. In its original “Video edit’s version, title track “Huge Samurai Radish’ certainly impresses with its intricate fusion of contorted IDM/glitch-hop rhythms and eerie atmospheric samples, its treatment of warped vintage vinyl samples almost calling to mind Amon Tobin’ latter-day tainted soundscapes.
Whereas Mr. Tobin frequently specialises in creeping unease however, there’ an underlying beatific “glue’ here that holds proceedings together even when they threaten to descend into complete hyper-edit chaos, in the shape of the delicate, optimistic-sounding synths and instrumental textures that form the melodic core of the track. It’s a factor that’s also immediately apparent amongst the flickering, stutter-edited rhythms of opening track “Bring It On’ – while the swirling organs and massed background B-boy chants suggest menace at first, they’re tempered by the addition of the sorts of soaring guitar licks that Def Jux might sample if they were a bit more “wide-eyed.’ The same is certainly also true for “Untitled6′, as sets the stage for a nightmarish descent amidst brooding orchestral chords and jack-hammer bursts of breakcore beat programming, but in this case, there’ considerably less light left for the listener at the end of this particular John Carpenter-esque tunnel.
The five reworkings of “Huge Samurai Radish’ collected here also provide consistently engaging and stylistically divergent re-takes on the original, and in truth represent some of the most impressive tracks here. Former Sublight labelmates Lynx & Ram certainly impress with their reinterpretation, which recasts things in a brooding, synth and guitar-dominated gothy-punk setting, as does Datach’I, who ventures out into nosebleed breakcore rhythms like some meeting point between Squarepusher and Shitmat. It’s Sinier himself though who perhaps manages to slightly outdo his collaborators with his re-take, which features guest vocals from ex-Cannibal Ox MC Vast Aire, and is easily worth the price entry here alone. Well worth checking; from the sounds of things on this appetiser EP, Sinier’ upcoming Brain Kitchen album should offer up more than a few delights.
Chris Downton
