Machinedrum

As one half of Sepalcure (along with Praveen Sharma), Travis Stewart helped craft one of the final authentic dubstep albums before the genre was co-opted by ham-fisters like Bassnectar and Skrillex. Therefore it was hardly a shock that, under his Machinedrum moniker, Stewart deliberately moved past the textural avenues of early UK garage and two-step on last year's SXLND EP. However, the surprise this time is that the style-hopping, genre-manipulating trailblazer has retraced his steps on Vapor City. Delving further into the bent vocal samples and click-clack polyrhythms that defined his preceding releases, Vapor City nonetheless benefits from a new crop of songs that feel simultaneously rubbery and dense. Dusting R&B's pacing with waves of psychedelia, IDM and even shoegaze, tracks like the sterile, jittery "Gunshotta" and the dreamy, lucid "U Still Lie" structurally sound worlds apart, but feel like they're within the same collapsing galaxy. On Vapor City, Machinedrum steers clear of dramatic style makeovers, opting to focus on sharpening his craft while leaving the listener with a collection of songs that operates on pure magnetism and unbridled confidence.