Who is Altrice? Well, according to legend, the elusive producer is from Tucson and arrived onto the scene by way of a Caribou (mega)remix in 2010. Dan Snaith, AKA Caribou, had opened up an online contest inviting people to remix his song Sun. Altrice emerged the victor by going a step further; he remixed Caribou’s entire album. Since this initial moment of cyber fame over a decade ago, there’s been little word from Altrice, if any at all. BDA Creature is really our first introduction to Altrice outside of a remix, and it arrives by way of Snaith’s own label Jiaolong.
BDA Creature pretty much affirms what we might have known about Altrice from the get go; they have an instinct for dance music. The track sits somewhere between house and IDM, with a significant influence from bass music. This makes for some potent dance magic, everything about this has been programmed for the club. Through a shadowy and static washed food on the floor, a hushed and sultry vocal weaves itself in and out of phrases of industrial clatter. Structurally, and on paper, it’s a fairly straightforward house loop save for its closing four bars of breaks. But it’s the steely, sort of grimey quality to the sounds themselves that make BDA Creature so enticing, and where Altrice shows the most signs of visionary behaviour. There’s a distinct distortion to BDA Creature that makes it feels excitingly fresh, despite its core familiarity. The fact that everything sounds so jagged, unpolished even, gives the entire track a sense of exhilaration and unpredictability. The actual composition of BDA Creature is laudable; even house at its most cyclical takes a deft understanding of its temporality in order to produce something this watertight. It’s a matter of timing, and Altrice’s is near pitch perfect even when working with such manically wonky pieces.
Listen to BDA Creature below, and download the single here.
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