KUHN : SLIME BEACH

Following a youthful decade of producing beats between New York and Boston, 22-year-old Bennett Kuhn has honed in on a sound that spans a wide range of contemporary electronic music. Ranging from futurist hip-hop a la Low End Theory through Chi-Town juke to post-dubstep, Kuhn’s sound is raw, energetic and individual.

'Slime Beach' is a slinky angry rasta crunk explosion. Manically ascending 3-octave synth kalimba arpeggios are punctuated by mammoth sharp 808 kicks and g-funk square leads rising up like a symphony, with extra vibraslap for the win. 'Stoneskipper' pushes uptempo, again juicing the bass bins with distorted square waves that mutate and screech, while percussion samples salvaged from a dusty Polynesian ethnographic recording keep things generally funky. 'Back 'N' Forth' is deeper, with brooding detuned pads washing over solid 808 footwork rhythms while two tracks of severely panned vocal mantras intertwine and separate in polyrhythm. 'Island' is the most melodic of the bunch, a jubilant glittery synth workout underpinned by quaking sub kicks constantly on the verge of erupting into new and more violent ranges of infrasound. 'We're Gonna Make It' is love song. Warm vocals and guitar lifted from the solo output of ‘Zombies’ lead singer ‘Colin Blunstone’ are reconfigured around a halftime shuffle, with static snares, lazer blasts, and persistent lower-than-low subs setting the pace. ‘We’re Gonna Make It’ features on the vinyl only but is available as a free download with additional remixes from Obey City, Japan’s Magical Mistakes and Kuhn’s ‘Alt Dub’. .

On remix detail, the recently unmasked Philip D Kick (read the story of the Footwork Jungle EP Series and Providence’s best kept secret, The Range both rework ‘Slime Beach’. Kick provides his last ever remix which takes a hybrid half-step juke-junglist route and adds club punch to what is an already arresting number. The Range meanwhile looks in a smoother and more translucent direction, swapping the emphasis to new vocal samples that grow into a majestic and euphoric epic. 'Back 'n' Forth' is retooled by London's Drop/Dead and Baltimore's howse. Drop/Dead's remix shifts into deep funky old school boom bap electro with a Frankenstein new vocal mantra ("What the F***?"), while howse redefines the brooding darkness of the original with a churning ambient track like early Boards of Canada but with a juke sensibility. The EP rounds off with a blast from the imagination of S. Maharba, whose haunting take on ‘Stoneskipper' showcases his beautifully gloomy yet majestically soulful approach to beatcrafting.

Irrepressibly linked to Astro Nautico, the Brooklyn-based label/blog/party collective co-founded in 2009 by Kuhn along with Obey City and Paul Jones, his initial output came in the form of a series of self released free EPs including Quiet Nights EP (featuring reworks from the likes of Young Montana?, InfinitiRock, Obey City and others) and Spacemusik EP.

Originally a drummer, Kuhn identifies his early influences in the hyper-rhythmic post-rave experimentalism of Warp Records c.2000, which in turn gave way to a fascination with jungle, dark garage, American hip-hop and the subsequent emergence of dubstep and its many divergences. Today the result is a melting pot of styles in the tradition of wildcard electronic artists such as Luke Vibert, Daedelus, Chris Clark, Squarepusher, and Machinedrum to name a select few.

Kuhn is, in addition, a talented visual artist. Currently focused on the defunct VHS format, Kuhn himself designed the sleeve artwork for ‘Slime Beach EP,’ and his blog" features more animated gifs and webart. Importantly, his website www.kuhnmusic.com currently exhibits a dazzling 10min animated background flux soundtracked by a mixtape containing over 15 exclusive original tracks.

‘Slime Beach EP’ is the beginning: it is the first of a series of EPs from the truly multi-talented individual leading towards a full length for Civil Music; home to Starkey, Reso, Drums of Death, Débruit, Om Unit, Darling Farah and more.