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Review: Bobby Tank - Afterburn [EP]

MofoHifi // "Bobby Tank crams the song so full of whizz, bangs and pops you’ll be reminded of that time you snorted sherbet lemon"

by Huw Hopkins, May 29th, 2012 and has been Read 805 times.
Last Edited by: Ffion Davies May 29th, 2012.

With the carousel of great beat-makers becoming ever crowded, its becoming harder to separate yourself from your peers in the dance music world. Bobby Tank seems to have nuzzled his way in to the smallest of niches and his new EP, Afterburn, stands up in the trophy cabinet next to previous award winners from the drum and bass academy.

It’s the use of 80’s rock production techniques that opens the title track. ‘Afterburn’ is carried by a Van Halen type synth while being pummelled along by a slick combination of tight drums and raucous cymbals. There is no single millisecond of track that is wasted as Bobby Tank crams the song so full of whizz, bangs and pops you’ll be reminded of that time you snorted sherbet lemon for fun.

LISTEN // 'Afterburn'

‘Timerider’ is more of a straightforward beat in the opening riff, but when the track kicks in, you begin to wonder if you’ll ever hear the same sequence repeated. At the three-minute mark, the drop is subtle and you barely realise the change until the original underlying beat comes back for a reprise. The maximalist approach that Bobby Tank will clearly be applauded for is in abundance but the extending bars and melodies provide the semblance of a laid back track in comparison to the EP’s opener.

Bobby Tank’s influences are most clear in ‘Vector Beach’ resembling and sampling sounds of 70’s and 80’s pop-soul, with one exception, that they are sculpted by a buzz-saw. The long draw of the bar allows for a ferocious drop at the end of each sequence where you are bashed, clanged and clattered by prog-synths and glitches all the way in to a crevasse of sounds.

Continuing with this soulful theme is the splice-happy ‘Wolpheus’ featuring a haunting Theremin sound. This gets removed in the second half as the focus moves to playing with sounds that Sonic would make if he powered up on Red Bull. The end of the shortest song on the Afterburn fades in to existence as we await the masterpiece that is ‘Circles’.

LISTEN // 'Circles'

http://soundcloud.com/mofohifi/bobby-tank-circles

A perfect song to close an EP, is reminiscent of a ballad with Bobby Tank’s maximalist beats watered down slightly to suit the mood of the track, but not so much that you forget the imprint of this producer.

If the entire EP had been like ‘Afterburn’, Afterburn would have been worth burning. Despite the sound in the opener being colossally impressive, the tricks will have run dry had he not switched them up, but much in the way that Skrillex and Pendulum are able to go beyond impressing you with sounds, Bobby Tank displays a musical knowledge and appreciation that most DJ’s on the carousel are lacking.