- DJs rinse Butch's tracks because they're rhythmic skeletons—they sound good underneath almost anything. Ricardo Villalobos's recent music plays a similar role, but his shapes are different, with dense soundscapes that hold everything together—the kind of thing you'd layer with a Butch track, essentially. This makes a collaboration between the two a mouthwatering prospect, and they come correct with full-bodied club tracks.
The two sides of their first 12-inch as Butric, issued on Villalobos' recently resurgent Sei Es Drum label, are very different. There's a tinge of humour in the relentless surge of "Up," with the ascending synth feeling like a chemical rush that won't settle into a buzz. It's a close cousin of Barnt's memorable "Tunsten," but where that one dropped off into pure silliness, "Up" just keeps going without a kick drum in sight. It's a little one-dimensional, but the way it bangs the snares until you feel you're on the verge of a heart attack is a trip in itself.
"Balam" sprawls out over 14 minutes in grand (and patient) Villalobos fashion. A slow burner dense with weird little vocal snippets, it slowly adds layers of resonance until it's an analogue bubble bath. Much of Villalobos's finest work in recent times has been produced in collaboration with others (namely, Max Loderbauer), and though their first release as Butric is slightly uneven, it looks like he might have found his next partner in crime.