- Crystal Bandito is a project that first appeared on Ultramajic's Metaphysix III compilation. Alongside other drum-centric workouts from the likes of French Fries, Travis Stewart's Aden alias and Jimmy Edgar's Creepy Autograph, the secretive artist dropped a manic and intensely percussive debut track, "EEEWalk." Feel So Free is a continuation of the music on Metaphysix III ("EEEWalk" actually appears again here) in that it continues to take the idea of art-school ghetto-tech to its logical extreme.
Even by typical techno standards, Crystal Bandito's debut record sounds exceptionally utilitarian, and it's meant to. He arranges each production to maintain a single idea, so that when even the slightest alteration is made, the change feels revelatory. Opener "Feel So Free" does this expertly once it introduces a snaking bassline into its hard, steady drum sequence and inflectionless vocal samples. The hyped-up "Work It" achieves a similar effect with no more than cutting hi-hats and some tweaked delay filters. Tempting as it is to write off Feel So Free as four overly simplistic DJ tools, that would be to misunderstand its creator’s intent.
Tracklist01. Feel So Free
02. Let It All Out
03. EEEWalk
04. Work It