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Music

Her Records' NKC Returns with Elliptical Single "BTD150"

The track is off his forthcoming 'Hague Basement' single.
Matilda Skelton Mace

NKC, a percussion-happy producer who splits time between Ross-on-Wye and London, has shared an understated and super fortified new track from his forthcoming Hague Basement single on South London imprint Her Records. Based around a simple woodblock rhythm in a call-and-response pattern, "BTD150" either sounds like the restrained beginning of a well-deserved celebration or a suspense film's horrifically calm death knell. The fact that you can't decide is what makes it most effective, and although the track's mood pushes and pulls in density—buoyed by kinetically shuffling, batida-esque rhythms—it never strays far from that elliptical, obscure narrative. Listen to it below.

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"BTD150 unabashedly arises from the same bleeps and snares seam I've been mining for the best part of a decade," the artist told THUMP via email. "This time I revved the kick right up til the engine overcooked. The melody between the percussion is the side-swipe, crunch and crack of you flying off your four-stroke on a bone-dry track. Listen out for the hawks passing overhead and distant car alarms ringing."

Hague Basement will be out on May 9 and follows March's free two-track release by NKC, Comm Link, also released by Her; NKC made his first appearance on the label via their summer 2014 compilation Her Records Volume 3. If you're in London, the artist will be throwing a release party of sorts on May 28.

Her Records' MM and Kid Antoine contributed a decisive, hypbridizing track to Mixpak's annual holiday bundle this winter.

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