“badmarsh_shri”
Badmarsh + Shri
Dancing Drums
Tommy Boy
To be honest, I probably couldn’t tell the best breakbeat club from a hole in the ground. Prior to Dancing Drums , I would also have told you that you’re more likely to find me hanging out at the hole. However, Badmarsh + Shri give new hope to the genre, in the form of what the label calls “The New Sound of Asian Breakbeat Culture.”
As you might expect from the marketing summary above, the sound here is a mix of the technological/Western with the exotic/Eastern. In a way, parallel elements of both combine to come up with something complementary. Breakbeat’s simple, repetitive structures blend well with sounds emanating from structureless drones – the result is powerfully trance-inducing, as the steady beats propel the uncommon sounds into unexplored territory. Spiritually uplifting? Not really – it just happens to be the perfect spice for breakbeat’s uniformly bland rice.
Tommy Boy, 902 Broadway, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10010
