Blixaboy: Intro To Futro
Concrete Plastic

Following his 2010 Kliks & Politiks full-length release on astroblaque, Dallas, Texas producer Mwanza Dover brings the noise to a well-crafted Concrete Plastic debut under his Blixaboy moniker. Weaving elements of dubstep, house, and acid into four crisp tracks, Intro To Futro presents an eighteen-minute EP of exuberant bass-science that sounds very much of the moment.

The opener “Daywalkers” moves with a light-footed skip that has the material barreling forward with an unwavering urgency. Here and elsewhere, Dover merges the low-end bass thrust of dubstep with the aerodynamic swing and shimmy of house and overlays it with arcarde-styled blips and melodic synth fire—“Dayrunners” more like it. By contrast, the title track opens forebodingly with ominous tones and mini-detonations before seguing into a second helping of uptempo beatsmithing, with this time the kinetic thrust of the intricate beat pattern augmented by immense galaxial showers. “Shadow Man” transplants us to the club with a straight-up 4/4 tech-house pulse that finds a pounding kick drum-and-hi-hat combination offset by a distorted voiceover that's equal parts croak and shred. Though more dancefloor-focused, the track's as fleet-footed as the others and the spring in its step as unstoppable. Opening at a crawl, “The Outsider” initially presents itself as the atmospheric counterpart to the EP's other offerings before shaking off its lugubriousness, dusting itself off, and rolling out an uptempo pulse that pops and sashays without a seeming care in the world. Intro To Futro isn't groundbreaking, necessarily, but it's certainly a credible enough contribution, and, to his credit, Dover makes it all sound easy on a polished mini-set that bodes well for the future.

February 2012