Taxa

Haron’s Taxa EP dips into a world of fizzing electronics and draws from it four potent club mutations. Having explored spacious ambient on 2018’s well-received Wandelaar, the Dutch producer turns his attention towards full-body rhythms. These newly prepared compositions, the first club release on Queeste, are dappled with synthesised colour and unexpected timbral shifts, aligning the producer with global bass permutations while maintaining his own playful course. The skittering dancefloor percussion of opening track ‘Drosera’ immediately signals this change in direction, leading effortlessly into the tightly coiled drums of ‘Benthos’ whose name is taken from the community of organisms that dwell on the seabed. In a nod to Wandelaar’s serene tones, the track ends with weightless ambience alongside snippets of human voices, a single moment of stillness on a release elsewhere defined by movement. ‘Pantala’ is pristine computerised dancehall teeming with disembodied samples and impressionistic swirls of noise before Taxa ends with ‘Pincertail’ whose bustling syncopations recall UK funky at its nimblest. No less evocative than his beatless work, on this EP Haron has crafted his own idiosyncratic abstraction of club music, one imbued with joyful melodies and a giddy, pleasingly destabilising sensibility.