L.A. production duo Nguzunguzu had a big 2011, handling mixing duties for M.I.A.'s return-to-form Vicki Leekx mixtape and offering one of the year's best long-form mixes in A Perfect Lullaby. Based on iTunes play count, Lullaby was the thing I listened to most last year, 48 freewheeling minutes of global bass and pop that reinforced the idea that genre doesn't matter as long as it bangs. Angolan club beats strung together with Brandy and Monica? Why not? Other artists, like DJ /rupture, have been making this case for a while now, but part of what made Lullaby so appealing was how easy the entrance point was-- you didn't need any particular background to enjoy it.
Nguzunguzu (Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda) have followed up Lullaby with original productions, first doing the Night Slugs-affiliated Timesup EP and now Warm Pulse on the trendy L.A. imprint Hippos in Tanks. In both of these releases you can hear a slightly diminished sense of impact between their DJ material and their own tracks. This makes sense in a way because they're DJs first. "I don't ever want to be called a band," Maroof said in an interview recently, talking about how in a live setting they'd rather spin than recreate their original tunes. So on Warm Pulse, it feels like Nguzunguzu are stepping outside their comfort zone, learning in real time how apply a curatorial ear to the (very different) process of building music from the ground up.
Most of the time, they do a pretty good job. While Timesup extended some of the modern R&B-via-global sound concepts of Lullaby, Warm Pulse is quite a bit different in style and tone. The title is a misnomer, really, since it's pretty easily the darkest and most ominous-sounding thing they've done so far. Rather than bright splashes of color, Nguzungzu focus here on a steely blue-and-gray palette, tracks where big walls of bass clang up against metal synths, creating kind of an industrial, construction-zone sound. "Drop Cage" is a good example, a blocky cut with jerking, stop-and-start bass decorated with mutant air horns diving in and out of frame. My colleague Zach Kelly called this "futuristic ice-cream truck music" and that's pretty much dead-on accurate.
This stuttering approach has a strange movement to it, like watching a drunk guy stumble down the street, tripping, steadying himself, and then tripping again. It's appealing for the majority of the EP but can also feel a bit cold and mechanical-- the grinding quality takes its toll and there aren't many vocal samples to punch things up. You start to miss those gaudy, expressive touches that made Lullaby so endlessly replayable. I think that's okay, though, because Nguzunguzu don't seem like a group that's going to run out of ideas anytime soon. Make a short list of the most promising young bass acts going, and they deserve to be on there-- a pair of DJs unbeholden to genre, who, even during their growing pains still manage to sound like the future.
