Pages

Monday, 30 December 2013

Review: Kunoichi – 'Nasty'


'Nasty' 

With one of the strongest releases in his back catalogue, and certainly one of the top albums of 2012 in the form of 'Five Year Plan', Uberbyte mastermind Richard Pyne has taken a step back from industrial and dived into the new waters hinted at on the final Uberbyte album. His new project is Kunoichi, an electro-dance project heavily steeped in glitch, dubstep, house and drum 'n' bass but devoid of any allegiance to genre convention. The result is the 'Nasty' EP; two tracks aimed squarely at reinventing and redefining Pyne's dancefloor assault for 2014.

The title track is a fairly stripped back mix of glitch leads and dubstep bass driven by a mid-tempo beat. It evokes the spirit of The Prodigy's early acid house output along with the likes of the modern bass-ier flavours of Knife Party.
The b-side is 'It Doesn't Matter (What You Think)', a rousing electro-house track crammed full of stuttering bass and some samples of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson at his best amidst a flurry of others. The tracks feels like what The KLF and The Shamen would be doing if they'd been formed post-millenium.

This is a big departure for Pyne and even with these first two tracks it shows a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into creating a new sound and chapter in his carer. Uberbyte may be over, but with Kunoichi he looks set to grow and develop into ever more exciting areas.