Available on: Direct Current 12″

Cosmin TRG (formally just TRG) is one of those producers who never seemed to have any one particular home base or community. Perhaps it’s being from Romania, or maybe it’s just the fact that his sound is as unpredictable as the labels he’s released on. Hessle Audio, Tempa, Hotflush, Subway, and Soul Motive are just some of the labels TRG has worked with, and now he emerges as the second release on Holland’s Rush Hour’s new Direct Current imprint, the first release coming last month from FaltyDL.

The two tracks here are far from the chunky Funky of TRG’s ‘Now You Know’ doublepack on Tempa, taking the form of ghostly, techno-tinged grooves that resemble gossamer skeletons more than fully-fledged beats.’See Other People’ is one of the most infuriating tracks I’ve ever liked. Appropriating a series of clipped, filtered riffs, it employs an alarming number of vocal samples that pop in and out of the track’s broadly spread soundscape like they have minds of their own. It’s an absorbing experiment with foreground and background: the vocals have virtually no connection with the melody or beat of the song, competing for attention with the percussion, the bass, and those blippy loops. It’s hard to tell what you’re supposed to be focusing on and indeed, it’s hard to focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds.

‘Groove Control’ is more straight-forward, with a direct garage beat and a churning, rolling bassline. Coloured with a worn-out organ riff that sounds like the acrid remains of Scuba’s ‘You Got Me’ being left in the sun too long, it’s adorned with sounds that hark back to TRG’s more cerebral work on Hessle Audio. It’s clear there’s a theme of bass-focused music developing on Rush Hour’s new label, but it’s defiantly off-centre. Hopefully they keep the releases coming fast – I’ll take confusion over boredom any day.

Andrew Ryce