Out of the wildly creative streets of Berlin comes Afromaniac, a producer whose blend of jazzy tones and rattling post-Dilla beats makes for some of the smoothest new music we’ve heard in quite a while. The producer has just released a lush 12 track mixtape entitled Twenty(4)Seven, a beautiful piece of work that rides along tight, abrupt bass lines and keenly deliberate kick patterns, making evident at all turns just how serious Afromaniac takes his beatmkaing.
Fans of Flying Lotus will find much to cherish in Afromaniac’s use of flittering hi-hats and twisted bass drums that sound like they’re skipping as they’re played backwards bust still somehow in time. “Free Ticket” opens the new mixtape with a wash of chordal atmospherics, eventually conjuring a half-twisted beat from out of nowhere only to ride it for a brief moment before it all vanishes. “High Speeding” arrives lacquered in memories of FlyLo’s “Getting There” off Until The Quiet Comes, but is entirely its own groove; Afromaniac has a knack for composing an involved kick pattern along with a gorgeous instrumental section, and then somehow creating open space between the two on every track. A Japanese koto line on “RushHour Chillin’” hangs high above the track’s beat, leaving plenty of negative space.
And on Twenty(4)Seven it’s that negative space that forms a vacuum, drawing the listener in. Track after track, beat after beat it becomes clear that Afromaniac is chasing something sublime. The mixtape shows painstaking attention to detail and a fully realized tone–one of polychrome post-hip-hop that brushes elbows with Ta-ku and Oddisee. The Augsburg-born producer grew up listening to his parents extensive record collection and was drumming on pots and pans by an early age. That knack for rhythm has only ever grown, it seems, into what is now brilliant beatmaking. Afromaniac is reportedly preparing new music with vocalist Bajka (who appears on Twenty(4)Seven) and has also been working with Krautrock mainstays Embryo. But for now, his present music is bordering on perfect, loose and textured in its construction, smart and ceaselessly fun. Listen to all of Twenty(4)Seven below and be prepared to hear much more from this purveyor of modern beats.
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