Having been high on our radar ever since his blinding three-record run for 1432 R between 2015 and '16, Ethiopian Records aka Endeguena Mulu's Arcola 12" Ye Feqer Edaye / የፍቅር እዳዬ arrives in three tracks of fully frontal psychedelic electronic body music. Make no mistake, this is club gear as you have never heard it before, a fever-dream rush of Ethiopiyawi Electronic that sits equally within the crucially current club sounds of Gqom, Nyege Nyege, Cargaa and Principe as it does with the greatest sides from Tribe Of Colin, Zarate_Fix, Sex Tags Amfibia and 12th Isle.
Ethiopian Records (or E.R. as you may know him) is a truly boundary-pushing artist both in his homeland of Ethiopia and also widely regarded across the left of centre techno underground of which his tracks are a staple, with previous 12"s providing a melting pot of Ethiopiyawi and left field experimental electronic music. On Ye Feqer Edaye / የፍቅር እዳዬ, E.R. displays a freshly cooked up and super sharp-shooter mix of traditional rhythms inspired by Ethiopian Afar and Tembe patterns coupled with a heavy euphoric dark feel for rhythm and texture, this truly hits its peak on the lead Megbiya (do you believe in things you don't see).
Title track Ye Feqer Edaye moves further into the dubwise realm where you can really hear the Afar and Tembe inspirations of his sounds, mirroring label mates Primitive Art's most claustrophobic moments before the chopped 'n' screwed rhythms and RPM gets pitched to plus 8, creating a mesmerising LSD trail of voices, drums and basslines that wrap around the soundfield with all the velocity of a cobra. Meanwhile, Makeda closes off the 12" by following the same trajectory as Ye Feqer Edaye, with a glitched to the max wave of sound rises high above the speaker stack before breaking into a steppers rhythm akin to Nkisi's gabba-techstep fired into a vortex of dub techno that's been time stretched to total oblivion.
