African electronic producer Herve Sika apparently grew up on the Ivory Coast, with time spent during his adolescence in France and the Netherlands. This debut download only EP on Error Broadcast Cocody under his H-SIK alias sees him offering up eight tracks that fuse the hectic, off-centre rhythms of footwork with a sheeny, synth-heavy feel that draws as much from Squarepusher as it does more contemporary post-chillwave sounds. After opening track ‘Cocody Niama’ slowly unfurls with a slow ambient wash of glittering synth textures that calls to mind Com Truise similarly retro game-tinged explorations, ‘Gallerry’ drops things straight down into more familiar juke styles, sending a blur of 808 snares rattling against some vaguely Roll Deep-esque bass stabs as the frantic synth arpeggios heighten the sense of claustrophobic tension, only for balmy Chicago-tinged bass pads to suddenly inject a sense of blissed out calm right at the end.
Elsewhere, ‘You Don’t Need A Pair Of Shoes’ offers up what’s easily this EP’s most furious moment as flurries of razor-sharp hi-hats cling tightly to a juddering backdrop of growling bass synths and dense volleys of fragmented MC exhortations and laser-gun effects get sliced and diced all over the place, before ‘Co-Energy’ switches the pace down for a half-step crawl that flits between juddering g-funk styles and shimmering layers of almost hallucinogenic hypnagogic pop synths. In this case, H-SIK’s given Chicago’s footwork styles something of a mutant, futuristic spray-job, and the results on Cocody are consistently impressive.
Chris Downton
