DjRUM

Felix Manuel is DjRum (pronounced "drum"), a London, UK-based producer who's created quite the name for himself in the last year due to a string of stellar releases on the consistently excellent 2nd Drop label. DjRum's latest project, Seven Lies, is a culmination of everything that's great about the current crop of genre-defying producers currently making abstract electronic music out of the UK. It's music that's meditative and aggressive, minimal and maximal. Dub echoes, techno muscle and two-step shuffle are coupled with a pleasingly cavalier attitude towards traditional song structures and chord progressions, combined with a masterful sample-layering technique that creates an atmosphere of mystery and menace that never detracts, but complements the seismic sub-bass and jittering beats holding it all together. This is electronic music, but not as we know it. It comes as no surprise that Manuel is heavily influenced by jazz music; its influences can definitely be detected in the shifting tempos of tracks such as "DAM" or in the stoned ambience of "Honey." However, it's the incredibly broad range of influences and samples that make this LP special. Don't try to classify it.