Available on: Well Rounded Individuals 12″

As all-purpose Bristol bass wizard Baobinga wrote recently, there’s an overwhelming deluge of light, steppy music with impeccable production values and not much else. So it’s with trepidation that I approach any new artist promising the now standard blend of continuum styles; a sort of standardized experimentation as homogenized as anything else out there.

That being said, Well Rounded’s new Individuals sub-label powers forward with the debut release from young Oxford producer Graphics, and while it’s not completely representative of what Alfie MacGibbon can do best, what makes him more than just your next future garage superstar is the sweaty, humid atmosphere in these two tunes. Both ‘OK Rainbow’ and ‘Adjectival E’ are immersed in subtropical heatstroke, fogged so that every element sounds just slightly obscured and mysteriously smokescreened. ‘OK Rainbow’ cultivates its atmosphere with a crushing bassline that fissures the ground beneath, and takes almost three minutes of unsettling murmuring to coalesce into its stunning breakdown of unstable synths, plummeting basslines and the most soulful chipmunk vocals this side of, er, everyone else using chipmunk vocals. Even the track’s most Todd Edwardsian moments are held down by a slurred drag more exciting than any breakneck precision could have been.

‘Adjectival E’ is darker, with the careful percussion drowned out by ominous synth whines in the distance: think recent Radiohead mood-wise, grey shades of anxiety and post-millennial tension. That’s the other thing about Graphics: these aren’t your standard dancefloor tools. There’s enough detail (and certainly moodiness) to make these tracks suitable for all sorts of settings. If you can find room in your heart for one more between-genres bass music producer, you won’t regret it.

Andrew Ryce