Henry Steinway is a modern day Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to his electronic dance potions. His day-glo personality is called Clockwork; a 22-year-old with big-room, mega-club house bangers like his jacked remix of Avicii’s “Levels” that hat-tips the fusion dance genre of moombahton while shoveling in heaps of electro to sidestep along the way. As Clockwork, Steinway has pulled production aesthetics from and played alongside house staples (like Avicii or Afrojack) while mining through indie-hip EDM scenes fostered by A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold and Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak imprint. He embraces trancy synth build-ups and uses chainsaw revs and electro-burping tech-house that’s fistpump ready even if it’s made with mosh-pits in mind. RL Grime, however, is a totally different animal.
It’s easiest to present RL Grime as Steinway’s grittier, more ominous alter-ego. One with trap prowess, catering more to stomps than pumps. And RL Grime really is all about that life; he fiddles with the bass and messes with tightly-wound beats, pulling away from the explosive, emotionally manipulative pandering of his EDM counterpart. But the mega-club mentality hasn’t completely escaped him. With his remix of Benny Benassi’s chart-topping hit “Satisfaction” last year, the producer wound down the shrill, whining melody to use as fodder for frantic bass blips and sexily sauntering snares. The idea of mimicking overbearing pop melodies with syncopated horns and strategically placed beats flips the song on its head. It also represents one of the producer’s greatest talents: his ability to restructure songs entirely without losing the drama of soaring dance melodies.
And so High Beams*’* strongest points showcase the ease in which Steinway can use this technique crossover to straight rap production. Last year’s “Mercy” remix with Salva immediately comes to mind upon hearing “CliqCliq”, the duo’s collaboration for this EP. Like “Mercy”, the hit-sampled track is catchy, clappy, and sinister. Pitchy synths wail over staticy beats and a loopy, buzzing drone that could easily drive a person insane was it not complemented with the menacing, echoing thuds of static that push the song forward. “Secondary” features Compton based rapper Problem for what turns out to be the most complete, radio-ready track on the EP; a testament of where RL Grime could head if he was so inclined.
Elements from Clockwork remain as well. “Pockets,” the album’s intro, tempers his hip-hop instrumentation with lush laser-like synths that pan over ping-pong drum-rim rhythms and bouncing MPC beats. “Shells” gives in a little more to the tropes, becoming a moonbounce of elastic synths that wind up, scream out, and boomerang around the song. As with Baauer-- a recent tour-mate and fellow Fool’s Gold/Mad Decent affiliate-- this balance of rap’s bump-n-grind groove and EDM’s flashiness helps prevent an artist from getting swallowed by the glut of the recent trap craze. But where Baauer is putting in work to show that he can also do house (by stripping down Disclosure’s “You & Me”) and ravey festival show-stoppers (his collab with Just Blaze for the Jay Z sampled “Higher”), Steinway has no need. In turn the producer’s High Beams EP serves not only as RL Grime’s debut EP on Fool's Gold but as a window into where RL Grime and Clockwork meet.
