NO FEAR OF THE NEW: 23wa, Lancer, Rustie & Lunice
By John Warlick
In today's globally connected, genreless music world, it's a rare pleasure to discover music that feels like a genuinely new spin on things. In this column, I write about 3 new albums or songs I got into last month that I think push music in interesting directions.
My favorite discovery of the month gets a GET IN BEFORE YOU'RE LATE! emblem.
23wa - AZ
You gotta admire an artist that throws everything at the wall when pretty much everything sticks. Hearing an artist as capable as 23wa for the first time, my immediate reaction was: where the hell did this guy come from? (France). This is an artist with the talent, ambition and production chops of someone like Quadeca or Ralphie Choo but with more pointedly outré influences and, thankfully, the gall to show them.
I sometimes feel weird about recommending music in a language I don't even understand, but you don't need to spend a long time with AZ to pick up on just how much of what's being communicated is not in words. 23wa fills AZ with what I'll call an astoundingly wide range of genres and nuanced production styles. They're often shuffled in breakneck pace, and if you miss a minute, you can miss whole movements. It's completely overwhelming, but the technique displayed is dazzling; it's like watching a Gaspar Noe film, but it isn't so transgressive that it swears off beauty. There's a new, omnivorous sound taking shape here, almost like a French, Soundcloud Rap MPB.
In just the first song on AZ (put a hyphen between those letters and you have a good description of the album) 23wa blasts you with post-Incapacitants harsh noise, cools you off with airy PBR&B, and floats off into lush Cosmogramma-ian cyberfantasias, only to shrug and unwind the entire spectacle, ending on a tossed-off spurt of 8-bit hip-hop. Imagine what Frank Ocean might do after spending 3 years as a touring member of Boredoms and you're halfway there.
The whole album is more than worth a listen, and every song is like this. It's a gold mine of surprises, like when the drums anchoring "CORPS" fold over the surroundings and form a groove that sounds like being squished between factory machinery, or when 23wa decides to end "CHEVI" by granulizing its polished synths into pummelling Blanck Mass sci-fi blastbeats, that is, before a dramatic sunset guitar solo. There are enough ideas on AZ for 100 albums, and maybe 100 artists. It's a ton of fun.
GET IN BEFORE YOU’RE LATE!
Lancer - “Fine”
From the "no idea where I found this" files: a footwork flip of a, well, just fine late-00's Mary J Blige hit that recasts the source material's diva strut from the perspective of the guy she's just fine without. I couldn't tell you the first thing about Lancer besides that he's a capable producer - he won't even really show his face in the video - but that rings true with the understated charm of this R&B track.
I'm not 100% sure what keeps me coming back to this one, but there's something perfect about how the hectic drums play up the detachment in Lancer's vocals and the hesitation in the keyboard chords; it's the sound of someone being crushed and holding it together impressively. You have to respect it. This is also one of the first times I've seen someone use a footwork beat to back a smooth, vulnerable R&B song expressly because of the tension with the style's propulsive, jagged shapes rather than in spite of it. Sometimes you can have it both ways.
Rustie & Lunice - “Patterns”
Rustie's return to music has been huge news for me. I can still vividly remember sitting upright in bed listening to Glass Swords the night it leaked and being shocked at what I heard - an insanely immediate take on the "purple sound" that had been coming up in the UK - all expertly tight songs bursting from the seams with ecstasy and sounding like they were beamed in from a UFO. Today, Glass Swords' influence is so endemic that the listening experience isn't quite so jarring, but it remains one of the best electronic albums released this millennium. And ever since, Rustie's spectre has since loomed large over genres like rage and hyperpop - look no further than A.G. Cook performing a song from Rustie's Green Language in his own Coachella set this year.
Anyway, "Patterns" is interesting not only because it sees the foundational producer working with Lunice (one-half of TNGHT and a UK dance innovator in his own right), but also because it's evidence of the influence train running in the other direction. We haven't heard a full beat in a Rustie song since 2015's EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE, but if his 2024 teaser-like comeback singles were any indication, the Glaswegian producer has a revived penchant for distorted sub bass, and hearing compression-obliterated trap hi-hats under the gargantuan bass in "Patterns" all but confirms Rustie's no stranger to the Opium roster. It's a beam of ultraviolet euphoria cracking the impenetrable slab of rage music, and I wouldn't mind at all if Rustie and Lunice's upcoming EP explores similar cross-pollinations.
