Last year, Lisbon’s DJ Nigga Fox (Rogério Brandão) released a 12" on Príncipe Discos that stepped far outside the boundaries of batida, the genre with which he is most closely associated. Batida, an invention of the Afro-Lusophone diaspora, delivers its explosive percussion in short, sharp shocks—just a few minutes per track and then on to the next head-spinning tangle of polyrhythms. Nigga Fox’s “15 Barras,” on the other hand, was a slowly building, multi-part epic: a quarter-hour of gurgling acid, spun-out playground noise, and stuttering, double-time beats. It was just one more sign of the way that the genre, along with Príncipe, the Lisbon label most responsible for nurturing it, is evolving.
Príncipe had already moved beyond Portugal’s borders when it signed Nídia, a then 18-year-old Bordeaux-based transplant with a bright, squelchy take on the sound. When Nídia turned up on Fever Ray’s Plunge last year, it marked the highest-profile moment yet for a member of batida’s founding generation. And Príncipe recently added another stamp to its passport with the debut record from P. Adrix, a young Portuguese beatmaker whose music reflects the industrial club sounds of his adopted hometown of Manchester. Nigga Fox’s latest EP, released on the UK’s Warp label, is still another step forward.
This isn’t the first time Warp has engaged with batida. In 2015, the label released the three-volume Cargaa EPs, which featured pretty much all the major artists from Príncipe’s circle, including DJ Marfox, Nídia, and Nigga Fox himself. But the Crânio EP is the first major solo work on Warp from anyone in the crew. The raised profile hasn’t changed Brandão’s style: There’s a clear line from these six frenetic songs back to Nigga Fox’s very earliest recordings. But his artistic development over the past five years is self-evident. Crânio boasts a fatter, richer sound and more complex arrangements; he has also added the Angolan percussionist Galiano Neto to the mix. The addition of a human drummer alters his sound in subtle but interesting ways, fleshing out all his snapping, synthetic textures with warm, leathery timbres and dynamic timekeeping.
It’s been years since Warp had anything like a definable sound, but Nigga Fox’s music reconnects with the avant-dance spirit of the label’s early years, when brain-rearranging grooves met coruscating electronic timbres. The opening “Sinistro” is a slow, deliberate showcase for Brandão’s slightly unsettling sensibility, with acid-tinged triplets punctuating gravelly synth sweeps and a wordless vocal loop. It gathers intensity as it builds, and by the end, rave stabs are raining down like slow-motion lightning bolts.
But it’s “Poder do Vento” that really drives home how otherworldly Nigga Fox can sound. The title translates as “Power of the Wind,” and its central riff hits like an air cannon. The synth blasts sound a little like Joey Beltram’s iconic “Mentasm” as if rearranged by the trance deconstructionist Lorenzo Senni. Brandão extends the strangeness when, two-thirds of the way through the song, he introduces a brand-new bassline and a 4/4 kick, as though determined to knock you off your feet at every possible opportunity.
“Maria Costa” and “KRK” offer similar takes on murky, swirling dissonance, and the record builds to a climax with “WAABA-JAH,” in which flute-like sounds ripple like streamers over rattling snares and hand percussion, and snippets of voice are smeared into queasy fun-fair refrains. It’s exhilarating and almost exhausting: By the one-minute mark, between all those sliding pitches and fractured grooves, you have absorbed more information than seems possible to parse, yet he keeps piling on more. Soon it’s a riot of whirly tubes; then a washing machine with a chunk of metal thrown inside, a vortex of barely contained kinetic energy. The closing “Karma” is the record’s coup de grace: Using a theremin-like whistling and ruminative piano melodies, he turns the energy inside out. The drums are as biting as ever, but the atmospheric tones are pensive, airy, weightless, while the competing keys tussle unsteadily between consonance and dissonance. It’s every bit as intense as what has come before, but this time it’s gentle—mesmerizing evidence of Brandão’s finely controlled touch.
