Team Shadetek

Venerable IDM superpower Warp Records hasn’t discovered many new artists in recent years. Instead, it’s solidified into a pantheon filled with genre hall-of-famers like Autechre, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada. No shame in that (it pays the bills), but electronic-music heads lust for new blood all the time. So it’s exciting to hear Burnerism, Team Shadetek’s Warp debut, inject fresh plasma into the label’s veins. Team Shadetek (New Yorkers Soze.sht and Zats One) recalls the avant-electro-hip-hop machinations of artists such as Push Button Objects and Req, but it seems hungrier and more hostile than its forebears. Throughout Burnerism, distorted fax-machine groans and insectoid percussive embellishments fill in the spaces between rotund, intricate funk beats that’d turn DJ Premier mean with envy. Team Shadetek shows just enough reverence to electro-funk’s glorious history to keep the breakers happily spinning, while adding vital mutant strains to the genre. In a word: Fresssshhhhh! >