After a devastating opening salvo of 19 modernist rave mutations on a
double tape pack for Sneaker Social Club, Minder lands on Hypercolour
with another 19 cybernetic fever dreams still reeling from the open
season NRG of hardcore.
If you need to understand where Minder wants to take you, strap in for
the labyrinth narrative of ‘Knotted’, a smudged, 15-minute breakbeat
suite barrelling through lurid dystopian street scenes with only a
blown-out bass sprite as a guide. Throughout Sanctuary, bass is the
constant when all else is chaos. It comes in thick, warped Reese tones
on ‘Simulated Hunt’, gets twisted out through angry filters on ‘Popcorn
Lover’, comes on wobbly in true 2-step style underneath grimey garage
anti-anthem ‘Ard’.
There’s a lot to take in across the spread of Sanctuary. It’s the sound
of every rave genre slowly digested over 30-plus years, until the lactic
acid metabolises every snare rush, every searing lead line, every
chipmunk vocal lick, and everything gets mashed up and spat back out
into a gnarly signal chain at the flash point of
inspiration. The time taken is key – this is the sound of a life in
front of the speaker stack manifesting in something too wild and weird
to be derivative. You’ll hear snatches of familiarity thrown into
unfamiliar contexts, but for all the detectable lineage, Minder’s sound
is unsettling in its originality.
Dislodged ragga jungle techno, muffled hardcore nightmares, hard n’
haggard acid trance, junked up jump up – you could write an essay on the
sounds you can spot and the way they’ve been twisted. Aside from the
omnipresent low-end, it’s the unflinching honesty of Korron’s repeat
appearances on the mic throughout which bring Minder’s disturbing
patchwork into focus. For all the futurism attached to these sounds,
it’s also caked in a very human filth which can only come from this
earth. The roots run deep, and the fruit is rotten, and isn’t that how
it should be?
Tracklist:
1. Ard
2. Mills
3. Boxes
4. Dollar Bill
5. Service
6. Shard
7. Pomeroy
8. Cold Shoulder
9. Simulated Hunt
10. Sticks
11. Sharded
12. Popcorn Lover
13. Coleshill
14. Manipulate
15. Show Me
16. Knotted
17. Plough
18. Castle
19. Virus
