Escape Artist – Digital Natives EP

“Digital native. Noun. A person born or brought up during the age of digital technology and so familiar with computers and the internet from an early age.”

Prime handler of comet powder-fuelled floor heroics for the sun-dazed hours, Melbourne’s Escape Artist made quite the impression with his previous pair of EPs for Salt Mines and much enticing debut tape album for Couch Acid Recordings. Turning up on Kalahari Oyster Cult with his anticipated third outing, ‘Digital Natives’, the Aussie producer pulls out a quartet of old-school ravey pumpers, rife with the usual pack of patented Escape Artist tropes. Kalahari’s 19th oyster is sure to get dancers wading knee-deep in their own sweat as EA takes care of whooshing us off to dreamier Utopian heights in one smooth movement.

Cutting a path of cyber-organic fascination, ‘Another World’ flies us straight off to fantasized tropics where warm swashes of bleached-out pads and roguish acid froth languidly lap at convulsive ridges of breaks-riddled drum programming. Taking the original for a dive into swampy, Chain Reaction’esque depths, Canadian techno deconstructivist Flørist offers a moment of calm before the B-side’s storm. An all-out dynamic affair, ‘Digital Natives’ cranks up the heat a notch further with its heavy alloy of propulsive electro and ankle-breaking rhythmic outbursts, which shall wreak absolute havoc no matter the hour or place. Rounding off the trip on a jazzy, laid-back after party vibe, ‘Inner City Pressure’ is a vivid mix-&-match of junglistic engineering and ethereal house-ism; a most spitting sum-up of Escape Artist’s playful and versatile approach toward production. Roll the dices and brace yourself, this is some massive magic at work right here -