Thursday March 28th, 2024
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Egyptian DJ Postdrone’s New Album ‘WIPT’ Sends Us Past the Atmosphere

The 13-track album sends us out into the cold vastness of space, lulling us with an alien sense of serenity before drawing us into an inescapable deluge of sound.

Badreya Electroneya

Egyptian DJ Postdrone’s New Album ‘WIPT’ Sends Us Past the Atmosphere

Ever since his debut a little over a year ago with his freshmen album ‘Ready for Nothing’, Egyptian DJ and producer Postdrone has been garnering attention with his versatility and genre-bending productions. The anonymous producer has come out with his newest album, ‘WIPT’, in which he blends warm tones, luscious drones, and peaceful bleeps with an irreproachable sense of distance and isolation.

The 13-track album sends us out into the cold vastness of space, lulling us with an alien sense of serenity through left-field ambiance, breaks, and dub, before drawing us into an inescapable deluge of sound.

The opening track, ‘Kayak 0’, offers a mix of arpeggiated chords evoking the sound of early 00s dial-up internet noise, or perhaps an echo of a satellite signal gone awry, an eroding sequence of pads and light percussion. This is followed by the cosmic ambiance of  ‘Sfir’, a loop of peaceful, meditative synths that is briefly interrupted by an invasive synth, striking a chord of creeping horror or tranquility. ‘Gate’, an unconventional interlude that ostensibly sounds like it's on the cusp of a breakdown, shifts through ‘Sfirs’s’ looming atmosphere. Here, Postdrone creates a balance of light and dark with a contrasting utilization of soothing harmonies over distorted sonics.

As we dig deeper in this marvelous feat of hard-shoegaze,  the producer starts introducing new elements, and instruments. The fourth track ‘Sakin Qass’ brings a liquid d&b beat infused with splattering synths of static and an unclouded tenor vocal, in which a woman’s voice echoes from the void, a warning perhaps from a bygone era of Arabic classical music, one that is gently obscured by increasingly sinister electronic beats.

‘Sakin Qass’ builds up to the next track, ‘Www’, where Postdrone sought influence from idm and deconstructed-club, giving us a disordered progression, a vigorous kick drum and piercing  percussion. Something is coming, but it’s not clear what.

In ‘Final Hour’, Postdrone dials the energy up with an eroded fusion of d&b and down-tempo; layers of chopped vocals and a ravaging backbeat announces that ‘The final hour is approaching’ while Arabic vocals reminiscent of what’s heard in ‘Sakin Qass’ murmur in the distance, reaching out yet constantly spoken over by an escalating sense of dread.

The next track, ‘1wnos’, is purely coruscating noise, and percs that cascade harmoniously over a subdued pad, like distant war drums. In ‘su2’, the electrifying producer offers a chilling psybient fusion which utilizes rectified percussion that adds a glitched bounce to the rhythm.

Which brings us to the synthesizer-heavy loop ‘Untitled’, with a snarling acid bass asserting its sonic presence almost every half-step. It feels like another interlude, introducing us to a new status quo, where the textures are heavier and more layered.

Postdrone takes it to a simmer in ‘Drones’ a classic drone track with minimal production and sustained notes, which is rudely interrupted by ‘75’, where the producer layers uncanny sounding textures to encapsulate a sense of turbulence and impending doom. The heavy drumbeat contrasts with the high beeps and boops of a celestial system pulling itself together, before it all comes tumbling down into a conclusive drone.

The penultimate track, ‘Torshi’, is an elegy written with an organ-like synth, each sound filling a different spectrum in the sonic frequency. The final track, ‘DTP’, is a clear reflection of Postdrone’s affinity for noise. The cosmic static is overwhelming, and the percussion is constant in its finality, echoing into the distance like a thunderclap. We’re no longer lost in space, sending out satellite signals into the void; we’re mired within a force larger than us, encompassing us within it.