- Hip-hop, IDM and techno collide on a fearsome collaboration that proves you can teach old dogs—Mark Broom and James Ruskin—some fancy new tricks.
- A quarter-century is an abnormally long time to be at the forefront of a genre. Typically, the scene leaves you behind at some point, or preferably, you leave the scene behind. UK techno heavyweights Mark Broom and James Ruskin, on the other hand, seem to have an infinite source of creative fuel. They consistently drop top-tier techno EPs on Ruskin's legendary Blueprint label, pushing boundaries time and time again. "I'm always drawn back to techno," Broom once said, but it doesn't feel like a stretch to say the duo's propensity to steer away from traditional techno styles is how they manage to keep things so fresh.
This is where The Fear Ratio comes in. Asked about which project holds special significance to him in 2014, Broom singled out The Fear Ratio, a collaboration with Ruskin that's been running since 2011. The freewheeling nature of the side project offers a home away from home for the duo—a space where they can go off the rails and explore a mutual love for the weirder corners of electronic music, fusing glitch, hip-hop and IDM over a sturdy foundation of techno mastery. Slinky, the group's latest record, and first for Tresor, gets the balance right, living up to the name better than ever before.
Razor-sharp percussive elements and droney, detuned pads infuse the music with a sense of dread and desolation. They collide to mesmerizing effect on standouts like the stunningly detailed "LFIVE," where molecular drum patterns collide over metallic, groaning synths. On the unsettling title track, synths in the background hiss and spark like hanging livewire, while the barrage of kick drums melts into viscous globs of noise.
In a first for The Fear Ratio, they've opened the door to guest vocalists. Nothing much has to changed to accomodate the guests—most of the duo's tracks are rooted in conventional hip-hop structures anyway. That helps explain why "Spinning Globe" and "Death Switch" feel so tailor-made for Strange U rapper King Kashmere, where booming, rough-hewn production that convincingly mirrors his commanding flows. The whiplash snare-drums and sizzling hi-hats are stuff that Vegyn would be proud of. "Does anything exist when I am not observin' it? / Does energy persist when I am not concerned with it," King Kashmere ponders, deconstructing reality while the instrumental does the same to the music. It works so well you're left imagining how him and other rappers would fit on all of the other tracks on the record.
Ruskin and Broom aren't exactly making room for their guests here, as they successfully tread the line between maximalism and clutter. From the bugged-out atmospherics on "Appi" to the in-your-face bounce of "Effem," each track literally moves like the titular slinky, defying physics at every opportunity. If 2020's They Can't Be Saved was an exercise in restraint, Slinky goes full throttle, looking much deeper sonically, while bouncing through labyrinths of fidgety breakbeat on the way to the duo's core love of hip-hop.
Tracklist01. L10
02. Death Switch feat. King Kashmere
03. Appi
04. STMS
05. BS2
06. Lacovset feat. Ella Fleur
07. Spinning Globe feat. King Kashmere
08. LFIVE
09. Slinky
10. NB AP
11. Effem
12. KZAP