Over the past fifteen years, Blawan has built a dystopian yet gleaming sonic universe — breathing new life into industrial techno along the way. On Sickelixir, his first fully realised album, the Yorkshire-born producer opens fresh chambers of sound: rusty beats grind against splintering melodies and pulsing basslines, all propelled by idiosyncratic rhythms that stomp and unravel at once.
On »Rabbit Hole«, hazy vocals from Monstera Black bring fleeting traces of humanity to the mix. The raw, detail-obsessed sound here bears little resemblance to his 2012 hit »Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?«. Instead, the grindcore spirit of his side project Persher seems to have seeped into Blawan’s dense, abrasive textures.
His recent EPs already hinted that this would be no dancefloor inferno but rather a feverish, anxious dream. Yet each of the fourteen tracks carves out its own character — some even lock into a driving groove, albeit one that rolls over you like a bulldozer. It’s easy to picture the dancers: clad in chainmail, moving through the metallic haze.
Sickelixir
