Veröffentlicht
Sep 3, 2024Veröffentlicht
August 2024
- gyrofield's new EP for XL Recordings explores the universe by way of scintillating drum & bass.
- Beneath the ineffable themes (the universe, emotion and inspiration) that have guided their music thus far, everything is science to the Hong Kong-born, Bristol-based producer Kiana Li, especially drum & bass. Even gyrofield, their artist name, has its roots in physics. Li often devotes large portions of their interviews to the nuances of their productions, breaking their latest experiments down in granular detail. This level of technical mastery has seen them blossom into your favourite producer's favourite rising producer. These Heavens, released as part of XL's house bag series, justifies the hype. At just four tracks long, the EP depicts life, love and eternal space in the form of scintillating drum & bass and jungle.
Much to the bewilderment of their family, Li left Hong Kong to study sound design and music production in Bristol when they were 18. These Heavens embodies the drum & bass sound that helped lure them to Bristol, alchemising what are, in their words, "the very human emotions and thoughts that drive the rigorous disciplines of science" into sound. Each track on These Heavens is a vast, densely layered expanse of dynamic groove and relentless energy. The prismatic "Occam's Razor" is cerebral neurofunk littered with ominous pads and propulsive breakbeat. Ceaseless frequency modulation means these moving pieces shrink and swell, the resulting hissing textures breathing life into the track like a sentient organism. Li has garnered a reputation for doing taboo things to their low-ends, like adding reverb and delay to bass, a decision many producers would avoid out of fear of muddying everything. They do this and more on "Cold Cases," the EP's most dazzling technical showcase—as the bass snarls like a distorted electric guitar, walls of noise and minuscule clicks douse the mix in a dense fog.
The combination of these peculiar, miniscule parts gives These Heavens a distinct, off-world soundscape, one that's most evident on lead single "Lagrange." In a poem accompanying the track, Li dreamt of the heavens: where beings "live and breathe, thoughtless but with such precise rhythm—you could feel the pulse and every particle observed." The song, appropriately named after Lagrange points, a mathematical function used for space exploration, is an interstellar journey at warp speed. Staggered drum breaks vault as if through hyperspace, while detuned sawtooth synths whizz past like stray comets. Celestial chords rise and fall alongside the sort of pitched up, yearning vocal you'd hear on a Burial record, both becoming more luminous and determined each time they resurface.
Li channels a similarly star-riddled night sky with plucked chimes on "Vega." However, this scene has a more brazen edge. Teeming with uncontainable energy, a tunnelling bassline comes off as predatorial placed alongside synths that bleat like danger-signalling cattle. It's lightning in a bottle when Li channels their fantastical essence into their technically complex music, a sonic portrait of heaven that takes drum & bass and imbues it with the divine.
Tracklist01. Lagrange
02. Occam's Razor
03. Vega
04. Cold Cases