Bleep

Following 2015’s Youth Mode EP, experimental pop duo Naked release their debut album on LuckyMe. Having spawned success artists like Baauer, the Edinburgh label is dominating the global conversation about electronic rooted hip hop – Zone serves as a reminder for the Scottish imprint’s versatile roster and their instinct for new talent.

Co-produced by Paul Corley who also worked on OPN’s Garden of Delete, the album revolves around themes of human isolation and digital overloading: the duo express this in a variety of distortion and overdrive effects – hard-hitting, brutal percussion (‘Anomie’), rhythmic avalanches of noise (‘Slow’), anchored by weighty bass drums. Somewhere between Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano and Grimes, Agnes Gryczkowska's breathy, at times whispered and always highly reverberant vocals remain seemingly untouched by the chaos underneath: they occupy higher spheres. This contrast translates a charged relationship into sonic form.