Take Health’s track Stonefist, on which Pro Tools mistakes and glitches are building blocks of the song, or the Diplo, Skrillex and Justin Bieber track Where Are Ü Now, where Bieber’s pitched-up vocal is turned into an unlikely synth line.
In 2015, it’s noise, not maximalism, that’s becoming the weapon of choice for producers. Four years ago, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie were flirting with the same uncompromising mix of burgeoning bass and arpeggiated synths, and if Nero’s take on that style sounded slightly reductive then, it sounds positively atavistic now. That reveals the other issue with Between II Worlds: it feels like it is looking over its shoulder rather than trying to map out where things are going. The work of Ferry Corsten, Paul van Dyk and Gouryella would be good fits alongside the majority of Between II Worlds, so much so that the “past” referenced on Into the Past (Reboot) would probably be some time in Ibiza circa 1998. Dark Skies see them revert back to a dubstep buildup/drop formula that borrows from the reach-for-the-lasers hedonism of trance, which is one of the most obvious references on the album, despite their claims to be moving towards house and techno. Satisfy snaps the album out of the funk with an electroclashesque bassline that mutates and morphs into something akin to a straightforward version of LCD Soundsystem’s Yeah.
While EDM has since taken the most crowd-pleasing aspects of dubstep (the drop, the unrelenting, wobbling basslines) and built shrines to its own ridiculousness in the form of Las Vegas residencies (Vegas staple Calvin Harris earned $66m last year, according to Forbes) and festivals such as Tomorrowland and Electric Daisy, Nero have always seemingly had slightly loftier ambitions. Along with Pendulum and Chase & Status, they took a maximalist approach to dance music, breaking it down into big, chunky blocks of synths and bass, which, when they broke into the wider consciousness with the single Me & You in 2011, sounded intriguing, if at times rudimentary. Daniel Stephens, Joe Ray and Alana Watson come from the same dubstep-meets-drum’n’bass world as Chase & Status (who signed them to their MTA label) and their career has been an exercise in a very particular kind of pop music. I f you want to know who’s responsible for making the sub-low sound of British bass music a chart staple, you could do worse than look at Nero.
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