Bauer’s ‘Harlem Shake’ was the most played track from this fleet of brain bruising trap ditties, but producer Henry Steinway’s – better known as artist RL Grime – album VOID seemed to transcend the gimmick.
Five years later, and with a bucket load of kudos, RL Grime releases a faultless follow-up in Nova. This 15-track EDM record can be neatly separated into collaborations and pure West Coast trap.
The collaboration ‘Shrine’ that features emerging British vocal talent Freya Ridings is boldly tasteful. However, when the collaborations are placed beside RL Grime’s uncompromised trap bangers they sound like Taylor Swift.
Case in point is opening song ‘Feel Free’. Literally, as in literally not figuratively, if an outsider to this world of music asked you to define what a bangers is, this is the song you’d play. ‘Feel Free’ is informed by the same exhilarating fluctuations in both tempo and tone as RL Grime’s previous hits ‘Syclla’ and ‘Core’ but this time the sound is nuanced, initially placing listeners in the afternoon sun of a sonic a sawatari garden before a cataclysmic drop warps the prior serenity into a weapon of mass destruction.
8/10
