Ausschuss - Cruise

Celebrated DJ’s Jon K and Elle Andrews mint their hugely promising new label, MAL with proper dancefloor screwballs by Ausschuss; decimating UKG, dembow and industrial dancehall styles in a playfully mutable volley of devilish club ballisticsLaunching MAL as a reaction to the sorry state of global affairs, the ‘Cruise’ EP epitomises the maddening flux of the matter with a strong reminder to dance in the face of it all. In fractal not fractional moves, Berlin-based sound designer Linus Nicholson aka Ausschuss outlines the label’s divergent co-ordinates with seven tracks that bend sound designer tekkers to structures that step in the cracks between styles, zig-zagging between crafty permutations of classic and up-to-the moment UK club music, and a world of influence from Angolan Kuduro to Latin dembow and Afro-Caribbean dub, or what is commonly known as hard drum. Future-proofed by its taut but supple minimalism, ‘Cruise’ is an extension of Ausschuss’ previous rhythm and sound research found on 2018’s ‘Room 1’ mini-album with Milan’s Haunter Records. Under a title that puns on the archaic naffness of “a pretend paradise stuck on the water” as much as its seedier connotations, Ausschuss’ playful personality comes thru in its jostling drums and restless, meter-shifting nature, approaching each cut with a fine equilibrium of razor-sharp discipline and helplessly schizoid sense of mischief that sees him hop between style and pattern with a joy-riding sense of fun.Between the adroitly whirring 2-step syncopation of ‘Bunny Crutch’ and the drunken dembow swagger of ‘PSG 96’, he swangs the spare, enervated dubstep of its title track, which was produced post-rave in a corner of a Belgian warehouse, while the pealing horns of ‘Peaks’ appears to summon the spirits of hardcore rave in a mutant sort of drill-tipped industrial dancehall, and the post-punk informed tresillo rhythms of ‘Beverly Services’ ricochets like a stray On-U Sound bullet that finds its target in 2021.No mistake, this is rudely countercultural business, colouring outside the lines of convention in a way that defies categorisation, but will be recognised by dedicated DJs and dancers