Tunisian electronic label ARE YOU ALIEN have been pushing themselves further and further over 2020, releasing a series of projects including the V/A album Spicy Space Vol.1 and Dawan’s debut project with the label — Hyperanalytik — earlier this fall. Their seventh release in 2020, Energy Drink Vol.1, sees ARE YOU ALIEN anchor its feet in Middle Eastern soil with an esoteric mixture of sci-fi inspired breakbeats and house.
The four track EP starts off with ‘Crash Into You’ by ARE YOU ALIEN co-founder HearThug, who combines a bouncy breakbeat flutter with extravagant and complex sound design, complimented by lo-fi sampled female vocals giving the track a club-ready energy certain to heat up dancefloors. It’s an immersive experience, dragging listeners in with it’s swift energy and intricately arranged production.
Energy Drink Vol.1 finds more groove as the second track 'Signals' by Clotur comes into play, transitioning in seamlessly from its predecessor. The voluptuous seven minute exploration takes listeners through a deep space journey filled with lush reverb-soaked chords, gritty acid-303 wobbles, and a flurry of stuttering percussion that drive ’Signals’ forward by constantly upping the energy over it’s extensive runtime.
The penultimate track, label co-founder Briki’s ‘Call From UFO’, stands out as one of the highlights of the entire record. Sitting somewhere between 808-based Electro and classic UK Garage, ‘Call From UFO’ sees genres melt and blend into one another. Extraterrestrial wails, sci-fi ray gun samples, a very persistent yet melodious acid line, and a whole lot of breakbeats leave things wide open for the infectious vocal sample to lift things the energy even higher.
Laurent JC’s ‘Evil Corp’ closes out the record on a more introspective note, focusing more on a cacophony of distorted synthesizer bleeps and a steady beat to set the tone amongst spacey chords that periodically come in and out of the mix. Distorted one-shots, almost like dial-up modem tones, jump in and out of the mix amongst bursts of white noise that further hammer home the cosmic themes present throughout the entire EP.
Through Energy Drink Vol.1 ARE YOU ALIEN once again proves its versatility and playful approach to genres, bringing together a range of top quality music from some of Tunisia’s best dance music production talents. With ARE YOU ALIEN hopping between genres with every release (and doing it to a high degree of polish), we’re excited to see what sonic territories the label explores next.
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