- An album of geological vignettes that highlight the Timedance founder's mastery of texture and sound design.
- Batu is the standard-bearer for today's wave of leftfield UK dance music. His label Timedance is to this UK techno sound what Punch Drunk was to dubstep: an influential creative outpost that sets trends in London from the West Country. The sound design dazzles and the rhythms scintillate. It's the sort of dance music whose discombobulated beats seem designed to trigger different parts of the body at different times, for rewiring already altered brain circuits on the dance floor.
Lately, Batu's mind has drifted elsewhere. He's purposefully distanced himself from the idea of making specifically British dance music, and he's even changed his idea of what "dance floor" can mean with his slower, weirder new event series and NTS radio show, A Long Strange Dream. This is the context for his debut album, Opal, whose three-dimensional production values are meant to mimic the natural formations of coastal landscapes and rocky minerals. Each track is a new glimpse of Batu in search of the perfect sound, with patient loops outlining the kind of abstract but tactile objects you see on Timedance record covers.
Opal follows in the footsteps of debut albums by fellow UK club luminaries such as Pearson Sound and Kowton—records that did away with the usual notion of club bangers in favor of stripped-back, almost airless rhythmic experiments. First single "Atavism" was something of a feint. With its anxious, skittering groove and fearsome low-end, it comes off like a slower version of recent Batu 12-inches. But listen carefully and there's something off: the strings in the background are almost somber, and the lead melody is a groaning vocal pad, the roar of an elephant in miniature. It's uncanny and unsettling, a diorama of a real club track.
As with that croaking vocal, so much of Opal is about disarming textures. Listening to it is like rubbing your fingers along a jagged rock or crystal, feeling all the crags and nicks on the surface. "Mineral Veins" is fashioned out of detuned chimes that ring out into an empty echo chamber as a time-stretched voice wails, while "Even Here" hollows out jungly percussion until it feels as lightweight as empty aluminum cans. "Squall" is one of Batu's heaviest club tracks, where grating, corroded percussion triggers wells of sub-bass. This one's all about contrast, with purposefully ugly sounds swallowed up by the comforting rumble of the subwoofer.
Jumping from one abstract idea to the next, Opal functions as a series of vignettes than a full narrative, which often works in its favor. The loops never wear out their welcome, and the more typical Batu moments help highlight the lighter tracks. The soft-focus glow of "Emulsion Of Light," for example, features plucked-string elements that glow like the filaments in a lightbulb. But the most impressive turn comes smack in the middle of the album with "Solace," a collaboration with serpentwithfeet, whose angelic vocals melt into one of Batu's gentlest tracks. Every dubbed-out rattle, ear-tingling chime and synthetic vocal loop seems tailor made to hold serpentwithfeet's vocal afloat, an ornate frame for a Renaissance painting. In less than three minutes, Batu takes his sound design to another level. It's delicate and elegant, powerful in a whole different way.
"Squall" rumbles in after "Solace," making the mid-album detour a passing mirage. t's enough to make you wonder what Batu could have done with an album of softer tracks, but the way he balances it with coarser material is part of Opal's genius. It's in this sequencing that the album really resembles the landscapes that inspired it: tranquil white sand beaches followed by rocky outcroppings that look like they could kill you if you took a wrong step. Batu has always understood the contrasts inherent in his lineage of dance music—gorgeous sound design set against hard, often knife-edged rhythms—and Opal sets that out in long form. The LP has all the hallmarks of a labored-over opus, but delivered with the casual eccentricity of the natural world. You take what you get as it comes, through clear skies and inclement weather—it's all beautiful in its own way.
Tracklist01. Former World
02. Mineral Veins
03. Convergence
04. Even Here
05. Atavism
06. Emulsion Of Light
07. Solace
08. Squall
09. Spectral Hearts
10. Eolith
11. Always There