DJ Swagger belongs to a generation of producers for whom historical sounds and contemporary subcultures are always just a tab away that they have opened three weeks ago. The Bielefeld native’s second full-length is correspondingly rich in style. Already the opener »Jingle 21« lets a massive bass rumble over a hip-hop beat moving at breakneck speed and then unexpectedly throws deep-housy chords into the mix, before a short synth-funk intermezzo indicates an abrupt change of course—which is exactly when the bass returns and pulls the wheel around once more. And so it goes criss-crossing through and between all kinds of genres, always searching for the balance of (apparent) opposites. Perhaps this is only an appropriate aesthetic expression of the personal themes that the producer has processed in it: »Minor Major Grand Schemes« is both a document and a product of going into long-term therapy and the resulting changes in the producer’s inner life and environment. In this light, the rapid changes in style and tempo between—to name just a few genres referenced here—techno, UK garage, dubstep, trap, house, rap and a fair amount of pop are not to be understood as an expression of internal conflicts, but rather the opposite: DJ Swagger’s music has an inner calm and artistic consistency that is usually lacking in music based on similar attempts to reconcile different genres with each other. This album is nothing but astonishing.
Joy Orbison
Flight FM / Shiloh’s Revenge
XL Recordings