- Gifted Bristol producer Lurka strips his music down to the fundamentals.
- Experimentation and science go hand in hand. Like juggling to a juggler or jokes to a joker, it's part of their reason for being. So as the UK techno producer dubbed Bristol's mad scientist, Lurka wouldn't be Lurka if he wasn't experimenting with something new. Since 2020, he's mostly done this as one half of XRA, his IDM synth-pop band with Bruce. But, following a sample pack in February, he's back to tinkering with his solo project again, stripping his oddball techno down to the barebones for his latest release, Powers.
There's little left to imagination on the EP's Bandcamp page, which spells out the genre and purpose of each track, like how a competitor would say their name and hometown on Blind Date. Vocal samples on "Re:Speak" stutter through its "perc roller" of hard-panned hand drums, clicks and claps. A whoopie cushion of a sub pulse adds the most bite to "String," where the actual synth strings just about keep it tied to its tag of "MNML Gryme"—more so than its 125 BPM tempo, anyway.
Being basic (in Lurka terms) doesn't make these tracks any less enjoyable than the gnarly tunes we've come to expect from him. Instead, you can hear the same odd character in just one or two well-crafted sounds. In the title track, a mopey-as-hell bassline turns what could easily have been a big room tech house tune into something more grungy, fit for a wallow in the basement. On "Mystick Crystal," bass plops caught in some electromagnetic gristle muddle the spritely 2-step shuffle. In peeling everything back, Powers shows that Lurka's music is unique down to the molecular level.