Picks Of The Week (03.12.22

1. Healian - Escape The Void EP 💎 [Ekou Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Geostatic, Skylark, Buunshin

Is he trying to tell us to heal Ian? Or is he someone from Hea, i.e. a Hea-lian? Or is he a male from outer space with dyslexia, i.e. He-alian? We will probably never know. The music he puts out is pretty great though, which is why he is this week's Hidden Gem Of The Week™️!

Jakob Vollath hasn't always been going under this name though. While the Healian project has only been created last year, the Graz-based schnitzelpowered artist has been living that producer lifestyle for at least a couple years longer than that. For instance, as wltndrf, sometimes with a dot, sometimes sentence-cased, he has been creating a lot of Hip-Hop beats, mostly for Dyfus aka Josef Yamamoto. You know who was also on the team for a lot of these? Moekel! Maybe you won't remember the synth maestro, but I definitely do and that's good enough for me at the moment. Anyway. Some time in the last few years, however, he has undergone a little name change to an equally lowercased, but far less vowel-shy alias: showerforanhour! From what I can find, this new moniker is basically a spiritual successor of the previous one, with a couple house experiments here and there having expanded the horizon of it a little.

As you might remember from the beginning of the previous paragraph though, that's not where the branching-out stopped. In 2021, Jakob pivoted over to DnB, debuting another new (he)alias, Healian, with a feature on Tyr Kohout's XLD remix LP! After releasing his first original tune on Ekou's Fragment compilation a few months ago, he's now back on the label with a brand new, 4-track solo EP! Wait, we have never had an Ekou release on here before? Okay, alright, we gotta shine a light on the backstory of this wonderful underground label first then. Them's the rules.

After a couple years of tearing up the DnB scene in his home country, Portugal-born-and-raised Paulo Sousa decided to take it another step further and moved to London. However, so far away from his circle of friends at home, he quickly felt lonely, so he did the only logical thing to fix that: start a new event series! Inspired by the names of Greek mythology, Paulo got to work on the very first Ekou event in 2018, featuring artists like Neonlight, Mind Vortex, C4C and Zombie Cats, basically entirely on his own. Due to a last minute booking switcharoo, Paulo also booked and met Rui, aka Complice, on that night. Why do I tell you that? Because a few months after this success of a debut event, Paulo got the idea to turn Ekou into a whole label, with Rui as his accomplice! After a debut release by Creatures in 2019, Ekou quickly built up a reputation for high-quality deep and dark drum and bass, by the likes of A K A, Rizzle, Geostatic, Framer, Ill Truth, NickBee, Molecular and an honestly endless list of even more talented artists, including our boy, Healian! Alright, so let's get talking about that Escape The Void EP already.

For the first third of the EP title, Escape, Healian starts us off with quite the ominous vibe, complete with a atmospheric wall of synths starting way down in the sub-bass abyss, but then slowly but surely making its way to the top ends plus a couple little vocal chops keeping the tempo up all throughout, even when the drums fade out before the drop. With a cheeky short pause on the drop, where we're only left with an enthusiastic "yeah", Yeahlian pulls us down into the deep and dark madness, where quick bursts of bass-y wubwub's do their little dance. Over the course of the drop, however, the wubs seem to become more and more aggressive. At first, they start and end pretty tame in each block of progression, but at its peak, it becomes a constant mechanical barking that you can't escape from. The rest of the arrangement is going through a lot of evolutions too though, with the vocal eh-eh-eh's continually doing their part to spice things up, the drums going from mostly minimalistically snappy to little tweaks like adding some rolling hi-hats in the background, later evolving into full-on rolling drums and eventually ending up in 4x4 territory. The attention to detail is just great on this one!

On the two other thirds of the title, The Void, Healian turns the energy up a notch. While we start off with a similarly ominous, but more void-like atmospheric intro, with otherworldly croaks, faint knocks in the distance and just general we shouldn't have come here vibes, it's the drop where things go off the rails this time. With a proper earthquake of a bass wave, we are shown that, apparently, the void isn't fun and games at all and is actually rather creepy! Who would have thought? Said call of the void is contrasted with a response knock on the door, similar to what you could hear in the intro. Instead of a polite knock though, it has been transformed into straight-up pounding, almost making you flinch. The second half sees him switch it up a bunch, with the response to the roaring bass being replaced with some rather fun (relatively speaking, we're still in the void after all) vocal-chop-like synth stabs. Or synth-like vocal chops. Doesn't matter, it's proper phat and vibey and that's all that matters really.

You know what? It's about time we talk about the third track on the EP, It's About Time. At first, we are in a world of no pressure at all, with only a couple easily manageable elements popping in one by one, but like any professional procrastinator can tell you, what starts out as quiet and pleasant enough, can become more and more anxiety-inducing over time if not handled. Like one of those alarm clocks that become louder and louder the longer you ignore them. I swear I even heard an actual alarm clock in the background at one point in there! Maybe it's just me reading too much into the title. However, the minimalistic clock-ticking-esque rhythm continues on in the drop, with a couple of quick-firing drums continuously shaking things up and cut-off snares relentlessly pinching you in your ear. Just like with any good old burst of anxiety, all the little things, from the deep wubs to the wobbly synth melody, add up to one big experience. Unlike that analogy, however, I want to relive this track over and over again!

Lastly, we've got something that I vehemently disagree with: Ain't My Thing. It do be my thing! With fellow, equally underrated Graz-based producer Anthropic on the feature, things take a turn to the deep liquid, rolling sides of the Dark DnB spectrum. With a lovely heavily processed vocal sample, sometimes chopped up a little, smoothly rolling and technically clean as hell drums, bass oscillating in its power in such a way that it has its own little rhythm going on, occasional outbursts of some distorted or otherwise alien-sounding elements, it basically has all the things that I love in these types of tracks, while still experimenting with the rhythm of it all enough to keep it fresh and interesting.

With an extraordinary level of technical expertise you won't find in many other newcomers, Healian gives us a glimpse into what the abyss sounds like. Just a great debut EP all-around!

Other deep and dark things from this week:

Visages - From Lead To Gold
Various Artists - 2 Years Of Midas Touch Recordings 💎
emjulate - Pestilence Remix EP 💎
Secula, Maysev - Singularity
Karraki - Marble Castles 💎
TROPHY - Preach 💎