Xanopticon - The Silver Key EP

This is probably the most DJ-friendly Xanopticon release you'll find and it is probably the most accessible if you've never checked out his material and want a good starting point. His tracks usually consist of very fast, microscopic snippets bordering on what some people are calling splittercore. But the flavor here is glitched out drum and bass. My pick of the record is Lockjaw, a slow building, 9 minute punisher that doesn't immediately make itself appear to be a dancefloor cut. But, sure enough, like one of those magic eye posters, pay attention long enough and it will start to make sense. No generic steppy beats here, just pulses of bass and glitchy noises where you would expect snare hits. It's long enough to weave it in and out of the mix and dynamic enough that it doesn't get boring.

Yet another buy-for-label-completion's-sake that turned out to be a big punch in the face. Xanopticon has been hyped up quite a bit, following the footsteps left by Venetian Snares in the audiences' need for heroes. The inevitable consequence was for him to be dismissed or overlooked by a few conservative know-it-alls (yours, truly) for being too popular to be honest. A mistake, it seems, if this release is a representative sample.
Intricate, fast, but undistorted electro rather than breakcore, there is not much to be heard, other than waves of percussion mayhem, piling up, layer upon layer, for a big lasagna of tension that is not without resemblance to Undacova's DR-12 (or the other way round). The loud mastering is, of course, a big bonus.