While the past few days have provided some respite from the incessant activity of daily routine, the holidays have come to a close…. and it’s time to put your party shoes back on!
To help you find your feet, Mosca has served up some tech-house tunes in A Thousand Years’ Wait, the eclectic UK producer’s most recent foray into the “endless groove” of bass-driven club music. And though the album title might echo the sentiments of some Black Friday shoppers last week, each of its three tracks bear a dark, brutal pulse that strides to a different tempo than that of recent festivities.
If anything, the EP is designed for those in the midst of activity—for that halfway point during a long night out, when fatigue begins to creep into your bones. To resist the urge to take a seat, your body requires some no-bullshit beats to throw your weight around to. Characterized by its unremitting pace and ominous tones, A Thousand Years’ Wait is both brooding and dynamic, reminiscent of such late night reveries.
Mosca builds momentum from the first track, “It’s Not What It Looks Like,” which is structured around the relentless scrape of techno stabs and the constancy of four-on-the-floor rhythm. Unfolding like some grand conflagration above the din of factory-work à la Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a bassline blisters up in between the layers of industrial noise, and the song erupts into calamitous chords.
The second cut is similarly ruthless, but eschews the tension-release scheme of its precursor. Instead, “Kneecap” maintains a barren industrialism, locked into place from the track’s abrupt start to its abrupt finish by metallic rumbles and hard-hitting snares. An abstract piano sample punctures the song’s gritty framework, but eventually becomes part of the scenery: it suddenly changes from a jazzy tangent to the clanging of machinery.
The EP concludes with a deep bubbling bass and turnstile-like bleeps in “Press Up.” At moments, a dark sighing note provides an interesting turn of mood. However, it is probably the least gripping of the three tracks on an EP that already suffers—at times—from monotony.
A Thousand Years’ Wait may come as a disappointment to some when compared to the quality of Mosca’s previous works. Heard alongside dancefloor hits such as “Bax” or “Dom Perignon,” where he delves expertly into an assortment of genres and influences, this effort may seem distant and static. But A Thousand Years’ Wait was designed for a different purpose: it is a collection of no-holds-barred 3 a.m. tunes that will keep those groggy-eyed silhouettes dancing.
Tim Reid, the mind behind BBC Radio 1’s Deejay Mosca, has been putting out a careful selection of intelligent-but-catchy dance music since his Square One EP in 2010. A Thousand Years’ Wait is Reid’s sole release of 2013, and came out on Ann Aimee (a subsidiary of Delsin Records) on November 4th. With quality production and abstract-minimalistic album art by Boris Telligen, it deserves at least a gander. It can be purchased direct from label Delsin.