Rekid - 99 (2022)

During the first COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, Matt 'Radio Slave' Edwards set himself a challenge: to produce a track a day. There was another caveat, too: each of these "lockdown tracks" would be at the same tempo, 99 BPM. Now released as a mini-album under his rarely used alternative alias, Rekid, the results of this creative experiment are predictably impressive. Drawing on raw electronic melodies, bleeping melodies, lo-fi synth chords and the kind of wonky aural textures more associated with his Quiet Village collaboration with Joel Martin, the set's 11 tracks frequently blur the boundaries between IDM, instrumental hip-hop, electro, ambient, weirdo dub and, on 'Day 4' and 'Day 5', pitched down and radically mutilated bleep techno.