Evian Christ - Kings And Them

I struggled to compute the last Tri Angle record I heard so I was a bit wary about this offering from 22-year-old Merseyside youngster Evian Christ (sweet name incidentally), but I needn’t have worried as they’re bang on the money with this one. This mysterious 22-year-old apparently turned up on YouTube towards the end of last year and caused a bit of a stir with his first eight track mixtape, and now Tri Angle are dishing out the four best (I presume) of those tracks on this one sweet twelve.

There’s lots of looped synth drift with insidious melodies, subby bass pulses, cut up MC vocal samples, aggressive minimal beats which border on dubstep in places but without the wom. Sorry to bust out the B-word but it does go a little bit Burial in places, but there’s a crisper, more hip-hoppy edge here than Burial has, and this guy’s not afraid to drop a heavy dynamic shift or two, maybe throwing a hint of Sarantis’s crisper, grimier cool into the mix, but slowed right down. I think what’s really impressing me about these tracks, though, is the sheer amount of creeping, insidious, uplifting melody Christ manages to sneak onto the wax without it seeming rushed or forced. Two robot thumbs up.