The electronic music producer known as DJ Richard has spent the last five years in the world's club capitals, Berlin and New York City, but his heart still remains in his native Rhode Island. Along with his cohort Young Male, DJ Richard is one of the more prominent dance-music artists to emerge from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, and in 2012, they founded the "outsider house" record label White Material.
The Ocean State — specifically its complex coastline — is the inspiration behind DJ Richard's debut album, Grind, a murky mixture of techno, drone and noise music suffused with apprehension about rising tides and eroding shores. "Bane" epitomizes both DJ Richard's ethos and Grind's excellence: upon pressing play, a flurry of upper-register synths (a la AFX's braindance material) burst forth from the speakers, unshackled to measure or meter. But it isn't long before the song's slower, lower vibrations submerge those high notes and render them distant, faint, as if (you guessed it) under water.
Grind is out September 4 on Dial Records.
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