Pariah
This week’s Crack Mix marks number 250 in our series, and whilst it’s ultimately an arbitrary milestone, it’s nice to be marking the occasion with a selection from one of the UK’s most consistently inventive producers and DJs.
The trajectory of Pariah’s career is well-charted: coming up on the post-dubstep wave that reinvigorated UK club music circa 2010-11, the Scotland-born producer left his mark on the era with a pair of highly polished releases on R&S that neatly encapsulate the experimentation and alchemical blending of genre tropes that characterised the genre tropes.
From there, Pariah’s collaborative work with Blawan was given form as Karenn, the duo’s hugely popular analogue techno project that caused a sensation when the two toured its formidable live iteration at clubs across the world.
What followed was a period of relative silence on the production front for almost six years which ended in the summer of this year with the release of Here From Where We Are – a lush and expansive album for Houndstooth that saw him strike out in an altogether different direction, channeling his technical nous into an uplifting, organic-sounding LP rich in textures and musicality.
Whatever his studio output, Pariah has continued to play out almost constantly, and his Crack Mix is representative of an artist who is very much plugged in, with plenty of recent favourites such as Laurel Halo and Hodge’s The Light within You and Simo Cell’s Ego Death cropping up across its course. It’s an uplifting listen with plenty of buoyant twists and turns – a neat end point for what’s been a banner year for Pariah.
Tracklist
Qnete – Alone Together (Alone) [Shtum)
Beta Librae – Red Herring [Allergy Season]
People Plus – Work it Out [Incienso)
DJ QU – The Zones [Strength Music]
Kuniyuki – Acid Air [Optimo Trax]
Stephen Lopkin – Fridays at Pure [M>O>S Recordings]
Eddie S – The Spell (Remix) [TNT Records]
Ferrer & Sydenham Inc – Timbuktu (Jerome’s Afro Tonic Dub) [Ibadan]
To Rococo Rot – Forwardness (Traversable Wormhole Remix) [Domino]
Simo Cell – Ego Death [Lavibe]
Laurel Halo & Hodge – The Light within You [Livity Sound]
Ogoya Nengo & The Dodo Women’s Group – Bunde Dub (Orson Dub Mix) [TAL]
Zombie Zombie – Hyperespace (I:Cube Vampire Tango 87 Mix) [Versatile]
DAP – Little Deeper [Rekids]
J.C – Vertigo (Shed’s 030-Dubmix) [Cabrera]
Hollis P. Monroe – I’m Lonely [Renaissance Infinity Recordings]
SVN – 2006 [Acido]