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Double LP version. Includes two exclusive tracks, including a remix by Total Freedom. London producer Faze Miyake presents his full-length debut, four years after the fiery swagger of his 2011 debut single "Take Off" and its 2012 follow-up, the Second Six EP, exploded onto dancefloors. Faze Miyake is a definitive and thrilling realization of his signature sound; a sharp, vividly rendered club record, it casts his characteristic sonic traits in shocking hi-def, with disorienting hi-hat whirls and string stabs steeped in ever-present, body-shuddering sub-bass -- a dazzling, dreamlike vision of 21st-century sound system music. Faze Miyake's immersive and powerfully psychoactive tracks evoke a soundclash of styles; an explosive meeting of bass-heavy genres from across both sides of the Atlantic. His debut album epitomizes modern dance music's global ear while still remaining deeply connected to its local geographical roots. It mutates and reshapes his influences like sonic putty, with Atlanta rap's elemental bass ooze forming a backbone for drums that recall both jungle and grime in the way they hammer, spin, and clatter through space -- and in turn send dancers ricocheting across the floor. Chicago rapper Sasha Go Hard shares sonic space with the Dizzee Rascal-affiliated Family Tree, while London MC Little Simz is furiously intense on "The Nest." The neon melodies of "Yung Sneyga" and "Ocean Drive" evoke sun-soaked CGI cityscapes, but the moody "Ice Cold," led by Dean Blunt collaborator Inga Copeland's half-sung, half-spoken vocals, plunges you equally far into the deep freeze. Indeed, the album remains grounded in Faze Miyake's home city, both in its intrinsic connection to his own grime history and its freewheeling, gleefully hybrid aesthetic. While growing up in East London he was surrounded by music, with jungle, reggae, garage, and then grime forming the background fabric to his life. Those genres' rhythmic ingenuity and taste for sonic experimentation have in turn infused his own music, with his beats blending temperatures, textures, and tempos with almost scientific precision. "Snow Leopard" is tense and wickedly predatory, packing the infectious flex of two-step, while the elementally huge buzzsaw impact of "Fusion" reimagines his anthemic debut "Take Off" as a sharp, fleet-footed club monster. Somehow both brusque and hallucinatory, they're among the highlights of an album that both boldly expands upon Faze Miyake's music to date and marks the maturing of a unique voice in mutant UK dance music. Also features Izzy Brooks.
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