Grapefruit Regret

When producers Blawan and Pariah kicked off their Karenn project in 2011, the idea of UK bass musicians busting out industrial-strength techno was still relatively novel. Eight years later, it’s practically de rigueur. Yet on *Grapefruit Regret*, the duo’s debut album together, Karenn demonstrates what separates them from so many of their fellow dungeon-dwellers. For all the severity of their music, they’ve long since bowed out of the harder/faster/meaner arms race; these tracks, all of them floor fillers, are plenty powerful, but there’s a sense of restraint to even their most walloping beats. The menace of the growling “Lemon Dribble” is more implied than overt; “Strawbs” barrels along at a fearsome clip, but moves with lithe, slippery grace; “Peel Me Easy” foregrounds the nuance of its all-hardware production, served up in such exacting detail it could almost pass for vintage minimal techno. The thrills come fast and thick, but even at their most intense, all that space between the beats leaves plenty of room for armchair dancers to catch their breath.

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Blawan and Pariah’s hardware-centric techno duo returns with its debut album, trading some of the distortion of early releases for a funkier, slipperier sound that still bangs.