Photo by Christopher Jonassen

[Keysound Recordings]

Damu’s Unity is the year’s third full-length offering from Martin “Blackdown” Clark’s Keysound label, following efforts by LV & Joshua Idehen and Sully. Unlike its predecessors, it sounds very much a part of the current wave of fluorescent UK dance music, frequently resembling a kind of Frankenstein amalgamation of every imaginable post-dubstep trope of the last few years. It’s rather easy to pick out where you’ve heard each sound before, but they’re cobbled together in a way that seems newly wild and uncontrolled. There is an element of pastiche at play, but Damu sounds less like he’s copying his peers than rearranging their signatures into some kind of ultimate endpoint for the genre.

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If the mad scientist idea seems off-putting, rest assured it’s only half true. It’s apparent that Damu has an excess of elements at his fingertips, but he’s not incapable of reigning them in — the early one-two punch of “L.O.V.E” and “After Indigo” makes a strong case for his pop prowess. The former matches a yelped vocal sample with lackadaisical synth trills and a steel drum pattern that’s simultaneously obnoxious and charming; there’s nothing tasteful about them, but there’s scarcely a better instrument for conveying stupid, giddy euphoria. “After Indigo,” meanwhile, sounds uncannily familiar, its pitchshifted, upfront R&B vocal and rising synth portamento bearing more than a slight resemblance to a Deadboy or Jacques Greene production. Actually, it’s a near facsimile apart from the spiraling bleeps Damu’s clearly fond of, but it’s hard to fault him for capitalizing on such an unapologetically fun formula. The Drake-sampling finale “Don’t Cry In My Bed” is worth mentioning in the same breath, as Damu coalesces his melodic tendencies around a couple of choice lyrics, creating an agreeable sonic bed for a vocal about feeling “no pain.”

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Unity is most successful in these moments of pure pop, but its title is something of a misnomer: many of its tracks are departures, and this is where it gets patchy. “Ridin’ The Hype,” the lone vocal cut, features the abstract grime MC Trim; Damu’s Eski-influenced production seems appropriately restrained at first, but ends up swelling a little too much, struggling with Trim for control. “Plasm” pairs rolling, Middle Eastern-influenced syncopations with fairly stock garage instrumentation. It’s a novel experiment, but it doesn’t quite gel. On the other hand, “Waterfall of Light” lives up to its title as its splintery arpeggios positively cascade, and “Cheat When U Compete” features some very inventive pitchshifting. The stylistic hopping Damu partakes in here is proof of his chops, and while inconsistent, Unity contains a slew of surprising mutations of commonplace motifs.