Premiere: Imaabs – “Grafito”

Trax Couture has emerged as one of the finest curators of club material over the past year and its latest endeavor, the outward-focused World Series, has only solidified that status. Over the next 11 months (World Series Vol. 1 came from Trax Couture resident/label head Rushmore himself and was released earlier this month), 11 artists from all over the world will be featured in the World Series, their music released on a 3D printed, hand painted USB, as well as a limited edition, three part vinyl series. In a fitting progression, World Series Vol. 2 comes from another Astral Plane fave, tireless Chilean producer Imaabs (both have tracks on our own Heterotopia compilation!), and features a rash of brazen, analogue-sounding club material. The EP doesn’t re-write the handbook Imaabs has been refining since the release of the Baroque EP (out on Diamante) last November, but it does represent a rare diligence that manifests itself in his ability to match disparate elements, the bare kick drum triplets and the raunchy staccato hook are both part of important, organic traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, in a manner that is at once natural and progressive. On Vol. 2 highlight “Grafito”, Imaabs marries dark, warehouse-driven UK techno with Jersey club, with a verve not all that dissimilar to way in which Pearson Sound, Objekt, Peverelist and others mutated dubstep in the mid-2000s. Gaunt and percussive in nature, the track is as close to straightforward techno as the Santiago-based producer has come, but I wouldn’t expect the mans to crossover into the world of purists any time soon. World Series Vol. 2 is out November 28 (this Friday) exclusively at the Trax Couture store.