In 2018, what else can possibly be done to those six seconds of the “Amen” break? Since it already powers thousands of songs, Demdike Stare have gone right ahead and plunged it into a white-noise hell of punishing frequencies and speaker-blistering bass. When that instantly recognizable, indefatigable snare rush comes in on “At It Again,” bubbling up like something out of Loveless’ pool of lava, it truly feels like an amen moment.
This isn’t the first time that the duo of Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker has taken something well worn and borderline cliché, stripped it for parts, and cast it into a visceral new light. The last entry in their Testpressing series saw them set Soul II Soul’s chestnut “Back to Life” against a backdrop of industrial clamor and metatarsal-snapping 2-step on “Patchwork.” That series of 12”s unified the group’s central dichotomy, bringing the horror-film ambience of their early albums in parallel with the cutting edge of modern dance music. And those combined sensibilities carried over to 2016’s thrilling Wonderland, proving they could bring dance and dread together for a devastating new amalgam.
Passion continues along that same trajectory, though it feels less like an album and more like a DJ double-pack perfect for a club that’s in the midst of being bulldozed. It veers between rubble-strewn breakbeats and outright noise, between overwhelming distortion and Bluetooth headphones flickering on and off. Shards of grime, garage, jungle, and batida can be found amid the debris, but never in sizable chunks, so thoroughly do Demdike mince their rhythms.
There’s a killer house kick underneath the many layers of “Cracked,” only it’s scattered like spilled mercury, futile to try and get a steady grip on. “Caps Have Gone” bears the gunshot bass of Equiknoxx (themselves signed to their DDS label) before the track dissolves into a shimmering mist at the midway point. The dancehall beat soon whiplashes back into earshot, with Canty and Whittaker playing jai alai with the drums. “Know Where to Start” taps the iciness of early ’00s grime and the sickly glow of fluorescent lights.
Between Wonderland and Passion, Canty and Whittaker were granted access to the archives of France’s pioneering INA-GRM studio and those of the Italian collective Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Like those early explorers of the nascent possibilities of electronic sound, Demdike know that the results can be both dreamy and nightmarish, ethereal and dense. For all of the kinetic drum programming on Passion, the duo still make plenty of room for eerie abstraction. Nearing the four-minute mark of “Pile Up,” astral noise overtakes the stuttering steppers riddim, shooting the track towards the nearest pulsar. “Dilation” is downright dreamy, an orchestral theme in search of a film. And the garbled voices, queasy sine waves, and pinging static of “You People Are Fucked” feel both human and alien. Even without a heavyweight beat in earshot, Demdike Stare can still haunt the club.
