![]() ![]() It’s loud, gleefully obnoxious, and at times even grating, but Freaker’s sound is vividly present from the first track to the last – a feat that is especially impressive given that he draws from so many different genres and employs such a convoluted, scattershot production style. Unequivocally, ADHD is an EP proud of its own excesses. The pace, an abomination all its own, is so hurried and spastic that it’s almost threatening at times, causing a sweat even if you’re sitting down to listen with your morning coffee. It’s all volume, hyperventilating synths, and straightjacketed 808s that try to tear out of the restrictions imposed on them. “Venom”, the final and most muscular track on the EP, boasts a drop that could convince even the most lethargic gamer to stretch out his ligaments, all while believing he was still plugged into his console. It’s too frenetic and bouncing-off-the-wall hyper to take seriously, but it flaunts a sonic inventiveness that reaps rewards if you dig into it. Sprinkled with micro-malfunctions and arcade-game sound design, “2C-I” sounds like a cartoon space war was recorded, remixed by a meth-ridden production team, and then offered up as an after-the-fact DJ set for the surviving veterans. It’s an unending - and futile - pursuit of lucidity. Problem is, the track moves too fast for them. A fizzling, unhinged synth squiggle slowly grows from an unconscious drone to a full-blown seizure the ravers under its spell frantically look around to get their bearings, to locate the floor, walls and ceiling, but all they have is the track to hold onto, to keep from spiraling into a daze they may not wake up from. The span from the 2:00- to 3:00-minute mark of “Hallucinate” perfectly encapsulates this scene. ![]() This could be the rave scene that Freaker was envisioning for the EP: everyone is off balance, out of sorts, chasing visions that aren’t there and groping out for flesh just to keep themselves from collapsing. Anchored around machine-gun snare hits and an undulating, high-pitched synth squeal, the track seems to instantiate an after-hours club setting where, instead of dancing, the attendees are all tripping and falling into one another - high, exhausted, or perhaps some brain-drained combination of the two. “Hallucinate”, the inaugural track, sets the tone for what follows it. ![]() It’s a mess, to be sure, but Freaker is often able to curate the messiness into mesmerizing songscapes lifted from some alternative sci-fi reality. I’m trying to fuse rave with grime/ hip-hop groovers, drops, drum patterns and basslines.” This hybridized sensibility is manifest throughout the EP each track is a bristling morass of genre conventions that have been gutted, sewed together spine-to-spine, and processed through Freaker’s particular blend of coked-out adrenaline and stressed-out paranoia. It may not win over new parishioners from pop’s mainstream, but it should attract those electronica devotees willing to swim against the current.Īhead of its release, Freaker was candid about his vision for the EP: “The timeliness of this music isn’t so important, the main thing is that it’s rave music. The next of kin to February’s Don’t Freak Out mixtape, ADHD is entirely composed of drugged-out, synth-centric instrumentals, a format that grants Freaker the latitude to indulge in his most twisted and unorthodox sonic impulses. The result is a collection of five, nearly epileptic electronic tracks that tap into emotional registers often glossed-over in popular music: unease, gut-twisting anxiety, that particular feeling of dread when a comedown isn’t going well or when a come up has taken a wrong turn. ![]() ADHD, the latest EP from London-based grime producer Darq E Freaker, takes the sound of a hyperactive nervous breakdown and sieves it through an amped-up composite of contemporary trap, video game sound design, and going-ballistic hip-hop. ![]()
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