Roly Porter has been pushing electronic music to its darkest, loudest extremes for a deceptively long period of time.
He first started releasing music as half of industrial grime/dubstep duo Vex’d (with Jamie Teasdale, who now releases as Kuedo), dropping a succession of speaker-blowing 12″s on labels like Subtext and Planet Mu. They were one of the first acts in that sphere to embrace the album format, releasing the cult classic Degenerate, but after four years of music they called it a day.
After a couple of years out the game, Porter re-emerged with Aftertime, his debut solo album, and then the exceptional Life Cycle of a Massive Star, an album that draws more from science fiction, drone, dub and classical than dance music. Writing in FACT, Maya Kalev said that Porter “doesn’t just summon the epic scale of the cosmos; he uses it to tap into an awareness of mortality that cuts uncomfortably close to the bone.” Porter himself put it more simply: “Big and bleak, that’s how I like it.”
Porter’s third album Third Law was released through Tri Angle on January 22, and comes described as “a coming to terms with his goal of leaving dance music as it is, free to explore ideas of rhythm, bass, sound design within his own world without having to shape any of these elements to fit preconceived ideas or rules.” His FACT mix, however, definitely has a foot on the dancefloor: DJ Rashad, Rufige Kru and Source Direct all feature, but these tracks come after an extended period of drone, noise and general fizzing, fucked-up weirdness from Emptyset, The Sprawl, The Body and more.
Third Law is out now.
Tracklist:
01. Unknown – Enemies of Freedom (Unknown)
02. Pharmakon – Milkweed (Sacred Bones)
03. John Bence – Disquiet Part I (Other People)
04. Emptyset – Signal Part I (Subtext)
05. Roly Porter – 4101 (TriAngle)
06. Paul Jebanasam – 03 search another 3Hφ˙ = lose you i), place i=0 doubt I V (φ) am ∝ exp( √ 16π to meet you again pm2 P φ (forthcoming Subtext)
07. Mumdance – Path of the Seer (Unknown)
08. ADR – DesireProfile (Pan)
09. The Sprawl – Personality Upload (The Death of Rave)
10. Bach – Christ Lag In Todes Banden
11. Rufige Kru – Terminator 2 (Reinforced)
12. Kuedo – Boundary Regulation (Knives)
13. Primary Source – Waiting for the Sun (Reinforced)
14. DJ Rashad – I Don’t Give a Fuck (Hyperdub)
15. Source Direct – This is Baad remix (Razors Edge)
16. Silver Waves – V (forthcoming Portals Editions / Howling Owl)
17. Krust – Future Unknown (Talkin’ Loud)
18. Roly Porter – In Flight (TriAngle)
19. Adam F – Metropolis (Metalheadz)
20. u-Ziq – Grape Nut Beats pt.1 (Planet Mu)
21. The Body – To Carry the Seeds of Death Within Me (RVNG)
22. Gnaw Their Tongues – The Holy Body (Crucial Blast)
23. Roly Porter – Known Space (TriAngle)
