Glasgow-based Welshman Koreless is the latest name to pop out from Pictures Music’s always interesting roster of post-genre bass music, and it would be an understatement to say there’s a considerable hype brewing around the young producer. Maybe for good reason; his debut single for Pictures is the kind of coolheaded first salvo that barely conceals its ‘look how exciting I am factor’ through spare, focused atmosphere. Or maybe the lack thereof - one might say these tunes are core-less; and that person would be very sorry for that pun. Regardless, the two tunes here don’t consist of much - mainly staccato chords, pillows of sub-bass and tumbling vocal samples - and the atmosphere is intimidatingly austere.
Now, I’m the last person who wants to read juke and footwork into everything, but it’s difficult not to hear it in the jumpy pulse of these tunes, particularly ‘MTI.’ It and ‘4D’ are fascinating hybrids, but utterly transparent in their construction (really, you can see right through them). Yet Koreless betrays an ingenious sense of seamless fusion so insidious that it’s barely even detectable, but deeply ingrained in the coarse fabric of this music. ‘4D’ slips and trips on a precariously balanced and diced bass riff (hence the juke reference), but the vocal that struggles to stay afloat on the brittle organ tones. It’s relentlessly chopped and cycled, like it wandered off from some old garage tune and lost its way. ‘MTI’ taps a similar vein but in slightly more maximal fashion, floating on a cloud of filtered fuzz but retaining the same basic construction of fragile melodies and gasping vocals.
It might be tempting to dismiss something like this as trend-hopping or shallow appropriation, but you’d be missing the point entirely: there’s something organic and tight about Koreless’ music, an inchoate ideology forming that’s just as reduced and efficient as his music.
Words: Andrew Ryce // Out: Monday 21st March 2011
