Ever since Rustie’s seminal Glass Swords hit last year, the maximalist label has been thrown on anything and everything. Simon Reynold’s wrote an entire article on it Pitchfork. You can imagine how that went. Most recently, it’s been attached to Lone’s Galaxy Garden. There are no clearly defined characteristics of this newly dubbed maximalist revolution. Glass Swords was filled with cheesy 80’s synths and video game samples. Galaxy Garden harkens back to 90’s Rave and early Trance. Stateside, artists like Flosstradamus, Baauer and Ryan Hemsworth have revitalized the early work of Timbaland and Mannie Fresh to create what people are calling Trap. It all seems a little nostalgic, yet vitally new at the same time. Centered in Britain, but certainly extending into the rest of Europe and the United States. Some say it’s a response to oppressive minimal techno and deep house, but those genres never made it to pop listeners ears.

My two cents is that it’s a reaction to the all-encompassing nature of the internet. In this day and age, music travels at hyperspeed. Styles and production techniques fly back and forth across the oceans and highly localized scenes quickly become international. Back to the point of this post, the A-Side of Joker’s new single, “Skitta”, falls perfectly within this maximalist range. Here, Joker applies Trance to his standard Dubstep framework to create something far more engaging than anything on The Vision. The track rises into crescendos with reckless abandon without absolving any melody or complexity. A disclaimer: many probably consider this brostep. Another disclaimer: I don’t give a shit. Stream “Skitta” below and cop the single over at Boomkat.