Heatsick

Berlin-based Brit Steven Warwick plays a sort of Jekyll and Hyde act with his musical output. His work in noise-drone duo Birds of Delay (alongside Luke Younger, a.k.a. Helm) and his early solo cassettes as Heatsick saw the producer exploring dense fields of highly textured, drawn-out sound. Yet on his debut LP for the always-charming PAN imprint — 2011's Intersex — another side of Warwick emerged, characterized by Casio-driven, near-tropical beatscapes. Expanded upon with the release of the Déviation EP, the dancier aspect of his oeuvre has been even further fleshed out on Re-Engineering. A self-proclaimed "cybernetic poem," this LP pits traditional club rhythms against broken samples, snippets of spoken word, colliding melodies and deep textures. Warwick is smacking us in the face with culture, a motif evinced by the repeated phrase: "Modern life is still rubbish you say. Modern rubbish is still life." Rather than slow down and chill out, he chooses to mirror our own sped-up reality in his music, with impressive results.