Brooklyn-based electronic producer FaltyDL (real name Drew Lustman) previously graced us earlier this year with his ‘Three Rooms’ EP, and several months on, this latest 12” EP ‘A Taste Of Acid’ offers up his second release on Hypercolour this year. As this EP’s title suggests, the focus falls on acid in all of its varied forms throughout the four tracks collected here, but there’s a hell of a lot more than the usual homages to 808s and 303s going on here.
Opening track ‘Hype Acid’ tosses the listener straight into the centre of the action as sinister electro arpeggios spiral around backbone of snapping drum machine rhythms, the synth tones becoming increasingly distorted and gnarled as volleys of hammering toms drop into the mix, the entire track surging with an icy atmosphere that’s part EBM, part warehouse rave.
‘A Taste Of Acid’ meanwhile wanders out into doomy house atmospheres as pitched-down synths flutter against dry-sounding drum machine kicks, before a sudden crisp electro breakdown section leads things off into urgently pulsing layers of glittering rave synth sequences. On the flipside, ‘Blush Acid’ sees traces of Lustman’s early dubstep-centred influences rising to the fore as crunching half-step beats lurching against rising walls of cold electro synths, only to suddenly accelerate forward into streamlined house rhythms as moody pitchbent pads phase and shift in the background.
Finally, ‘A C I D’ closes this EP off with what’s easily its most odd moment, spending a minute and a half wrapping a gamecore bass arpeggios around what sounds like a seriously distorted stringed instrument being mercilessly hammered away at. A consistently intriguing and enervating EP from FaltyDL that’s well worth investigation.
