Available on: Rwina 12″

Goblin grime? Yes, if the title ‘Suspiria’ wasn’t enough to get the point across, Berliner Doshy’s second EP for Dutch grime outpost Rwina is somewhat of a tribute to classic Italo horror soundtracks. What’s even more frightening than the track’s jocular take on B-movie themes is how well it works: the production values are high and Doshy nails a staggering hip-hop structure that fits the theme to a tee. With its anxious ‘Tubular Bells’ references and skittering drum machines, it bears resemblance to a more playful Salem, replacing the druggy pallor with brightly-lit synth motifs. Over its six-minute running time ‘Suspiria’ breathes in and out, trying to steady its herky-jerk heartbeat with more and more variations its luscious synths which intertwine and wrap around each other in wonderfully smooth fashion.

The track’s two B-sides are more your typical Rwina material, sludgy grime tracks that lumber and leave a trail of slime in their wake. ‘Milky Way’ recalls EPROM’s recent sewer landscapes on the label, dropping pillars of 8-bit arpeggio onto a minimal backing track that bleats and gurgles with each landing. Moving away from the horror theme entirely, ‘Redworm’ is a down-and-dirty groover where the monotonous grinding of nearly every element occasionally lets off blinding cyan sparks.

Compare this release with recent work from producers like EPROM and his like-minded American crunk-bass friends, and you can almost hear a new sound emerging, sludgy, toxic hip-hop that sloshes rather than booms, dressed up with the most exaggerated synths this side of Butterz. With producers like Doshy already putting weird and idiosyncratic spins on it like ‘Suspiria’, it’s a sound that has a lot of potential.

Andrew Ryce