Thug Entrancer - Death After Life [CD]

Death After Life, Thug Entrancers debut for Software Recording Co. is a deliberately realized collection of dance experimentation and hybridized electronic music with narrow stylistic precedents. Its also a gripping, somber tide formed from the gravitational pull of an artists amble through unknown turfs.

Ryan McRyhews footing as a creative lynchpin in the Denver DIY electronic music scene shuffled to the other world and beat of the South side of Chicago in 2011. McRyhews new home allowed him secluded time and space to create in-depth and unconditional music as Thug Entrancer. The move also provided McRyhew direct access to Chicagos dance music history and the groundbreaking works being crafted in bedrooms and blasted on speakers throughout his neighborhood.

A summation of varied approaches to electronic music, Thug Entrancers multiverse is not dissimilar to other Software artists (Slava and Huerco S., for example). McRyhew draws influence from pioneering electronic and experimental composers who placed an emphasis on extended development and technique, alongside early analog dance producers who went all-out and all-in with little more than a TR-808 in their arsenal.

Death After Life is comprised of eight chapters drawn from the album title, each numbered I through VIII. These portions underscore a pitch-dark motif thread throughout the albums fifty minutes. Death After Life I is whittled and icy long echoed claps and panned sawtooth shapes swelter around the skittering percussive elements over the four-and-half-minutes of unsettled, environmental shifting.

Death After Life III delivers rapid-fire, straight up acid with a snare-heavy rhythm registering in an upper BPM range before fraying into the sonic beyond. Death After Life V frenetically lashes out with hi-hat triplets, lower mix perimeter synths and pounding claps / snare at a breakneck footwork pace.

The albums final cut is the most up-front Juke number. Altogether shorn of the more abstract spaces heard earlier, Death After Live VIII attacks with the feel of a live, improvised performance. In fact, the majority of the tracks on Death After Life were composed on the fly with very few overdubs and zero reliance on sampled sources.

Two additional tracks, Ready to Live Pt. 1 and Ready to Live Pt. 2, will be available as bonus cuts for the digital / CD versions. These two tracks can be seen as a prelude or coda to the album, with the formers warmer touches adding a daub of color to the menacing monochrome of the main set, and the latters variegation upending the preceding tracks lighter, more affirming feel. As a pair, they are a terrific balance to the weightier core of Death After Life.

While Death After Life reframes elements of Chicago Juke and house in long-form design, the end result one in which a subtler horizon is discovered, trumping more palatable musical codes and dissuading us from treating electronic music, or any genre-stamped styl

• Format: CD
• Genre: Dance & Electronic