- The talented New York producer searches for love and meaning in the thrum of techno.
- 25 minutes and 22 seconds into the 1970 documentary Meeting The Man: James Baldwin In Paris, the influential writer and thinker looks deep into director Terence Dixon's eyes and utters the now iconic quote, "Love has never been a popular movement." 53 years later, Jamaica-born, New York-based producer TYGAPAW feels that, amidst the racial trauma and systemic oppression of our current time, that claim holds true. It's not a nihilistic reference, though—for TYGAPAW, it represents a mission statement. To them, dance music doubles as a means to encourage love as a precursor to movements both political and physical. Over the course of eight East Coast club and techno fusions, TYGAPAW refines and evolves the barebones techno sound of 2020's GET FREE LP, governing the heart rates of clubgoers with pulsing kicks while scanning the skies with amorphous pads in the hope of "finding more love, more depth, more tenderness, and less isolation."
A beloved figure in New York’s queer club scene, TYGAPAW leans on their mastery of stripped-back, propulsive beats that brim with hedonistic overtones. "DLEW" opens with bulldozing kicks and high-voltage hats that skirt the surface like shark fins underneath an aurora of luminous, detuned keys. "PRESSURE" breaks through the surface. It's a freefall where an air raid siren blares over a thrumming kick drum, generating a good enough reason to get sweaty—whether that's via dancing or panicking. Even with these heavy sounds, the tracks aren't cluttered. Each element is pronounced and discernible, but it's the blitzing pace they work at that makes even the most minimalist tracks feel all-consuming. There's barely any space to breathe—once you're in, you're in.
The layers on these tracks aren't cluttered, each element is pronounced and discernable. It's the murky/hazy ambiences they conjure and the blitzing paces they generate, that makes even the most minimal tracks on here feel unavoidably swathing/all-encompassing. There's barely any space to breathe—once you're in, you're in.
Overt expressions of desire are chanted like mantras, and George Riley's hushed delivery on the sultry "GLAMOUR Riddim" embodies this best. It pulsates with an afterhours sensuality, as slow pads swell and fade beneath indecipherable chatter while Riley's earworm refrain—"Your love is the key / It's sticking to me / I like it," repeats until her vocals disintegrate into wordless gasps in the outro. The placeless and sensual "MYSM" (which presumably stands for "Miss You So Much") moves forwards with a coldly determined step, steered by guttural, tight-lipped vocals that glide through the mix like dry ice. It's deeply hypnotic and irresistibly immersive, particularly in the outro, when a combative drumline gives way to cloud-splitting rays of heavenly synth, taking the tack from cavernous depths to mid-dance-floor levitation.
The message is clear: persistent displays of love are the key to transcending above systems that require disharmony to survive. "There are constant obstacles that are there to do nothing but stop you in your tracks," TYGAPAW said, speaking to Crack in 2021. "Nothing else but to destabilise you and reduce you down to nothing. There are plenty of those kinds of tactics."
TYGAPAW's counter move is to power forward even in the face of adversity. The sledgehammering 909s that anchor each track command defiance, almost as if they could stomp any obstacle into fragments. TYGAPAW deconstructs and then embellishes techno with Millsian percussion that emerges like alien flowers in between pavement slabs. On its own, love has never been a popular movement. isn't meant as a solution to or antidote for the dearth of community so many feel right now. Instead, it soundtracks the search for one, particularly those heavyweight raves and communal spaces where the album will render love and movement as the only option.
Tracklist01. DLEW
02. PRESSURE
03. MYSM
04. GLAMOUR Riddim feat. George Riley
05. DO ME DEMO MODE
06. SK9 (Release Me) feat. LSDXOXO
07. MI NUH BEG FREN
08. TRANSCEND