Nebuchadnezzar

Live at The White Hotel

Genre: TECHNO / HOUSE

Cassette (Oversized Case)

Boomkat Product Review:

Super elusive techno mystic Nebuchadnezzar - favourite of Blackest Ever Black’s Kiran Sande, among many many others, here with a super rare physical release, deploying 90 minutes of hard techno ballistics infused with highly atmospheric pressure, hugely tipped if yr into Carrier, Hoavi, Chain Reaction’s Matrix, Live Adult Entertainment, Quiet Husband, Regis, Lost Domain.

For Reel Torque’s auspicious 30th release, the San Francisco-based, US-Ukrainian wunderkind Nebuchadnezzar lays down 90 minutes mostly derived from his own productions. Playing between 4-6am on a bill shared with Jam City, DJ Loser, Tamus and Conor Thomas; Nebu showcased one of the most extraordinary mutations in contemporary techno and 157bpm+ club music, hypnotising a crowd with a patented, peerless masterclass in modern body music. You kinda had to be there - engulfed by the smoke, strobes, and bodies of The White Hotel - for optimal effect. But this tape, recorded and mastered by TWH sound engineer, Miles RS, clearly conveys the unique tip-toe balance of ballistics and atmospheric pressure that Nebuchadnezzar has made his own over the past 6 years of prized releases, and is properly put into hypnotic context in the club.

Mesmerising from start to finish with a seamless, almost laminar flow of offbeat drum patterns that appear to fold-in on themselves mid-phrase but always go forward, alloyed with a melange of textures and samples lifted from ‘90s noir thrillers, grime radio chat, and contemporary warehouse techno, Nebuchadnezzar kept the ‘floor going quite unlike anyone else. There’s no big drops or overworked: just a ceaseless but exquisitely tempered flow of his own material, which notoriously average around 10 minutes individually, but are here layered and chained into an inexorable traction on 3 x CDJs.

For us, Nebu’s sound vividly flashes back to febrile memories of being snagged in the subbass-powered hydrodynamics of tech-step, flashcore and frenchtek at Manc free parties in the ‘00s, but uchronically warped with aspects of original grime (a curiosity he admits was piqued by sitcom ‘PJDN’ and has turned into personal edits of Target, Dizzee, Youngstar classics) and subtle rhythmic accentuation of new Latin machine music, with the gritty focus of new Eastern European techno. Held in an atmospheric physics with the sleazy sheen of samples from ‘90s noir thrillers and slivers of cold-rushing trance, the result is just an absolute chef’s kiss of uncompromising, contemporary dance music that taps into something far more essentialist and non-clouty than so many others, and feels entirely of the 2020s. Fucking love it to bits.

Cassette (Oversized Case) (0)

Edition of 100 copies, comes in an oversized, reclaimed library presentation cartridge with artwork insert by Nebuchadnezzar, plus a download of the set dropped to your account.