Fearful & Mtwn – Exordium

Written on 16.11.2021 by Andrijan Apostoloski

Fearful & Mtwn have twinned to create an LP with very tense and dark atmosphere that gives its narrative, with a lot of rhythm plays and surprises along its ways.

It’s introduction track “The Mime” very patiently builds up the energy that is going to follow the rest of the release, with very ingenious arrangement and bending rules that makes this release a sweet jam of very neat and groovy tracks. The percussions on the intro are very sweet sounding and come at moments just to make you shiver.

The music and production are definitely what is around the experimental techno of UK with acts such as Pessimist, Overlook, Vega and others – and that’s a very good thing, coming from the British Fearful, and Belgian drum and bass duo Mtwn.

The continuing “Twelve Over” shares its energy from the built-up that the intro gave us, and directly continues rule groove throughout, with the break present almost immediately followed by a dark and deep ‘reese’ bass and grimy synths.

Continuing to “Void”, this is sort of a breakthrough track with a very simple repetitive kicks and ambience, sound design on top that opens eyes from the cleverness and the nativeness it’s being set at for the whole sound universe to sound just about right. When the break develops, you’ve already was introduced to the whole set, so just the trigger to go a notch further tells about how marvelous in whole this release is, and that nothing here is a filler – but everything indeed is a killer.

The polyrhythmic flares have already been with us in the intro tracks, but in “Shallow Grave” Fearful & Mtwn come back at cleverness and genius sound design. The following track “Obliteration” is this massive industrial machine that sluggishly works throughout a huge and very dense fluid matter, but continues to cut-through all throughout. Another break, or a change in the ‘seasn’ within the sound universe comes with the track “Altered State” where huge sounding pads are being presented into a kinda nostalgic-colored vibes.

“A Murder of Crows” is a very huge track. This massive and grimy saturated kick glues on with the bass as it very slowly builds the narrative up, with system sounding like synth leads following throughout – all done within this positively weird industrial soundscape we’re at. At the seven minutes mark, it’s the longest of the EP with overall the slowest changes to the narrative, however done very clever and if left to be, very pleasurable to experience and be surprised to. A repetitive machine follows to enter the sounds after the break is already being all open, and continues to groove till the end with slight variations often heard, and synths just being blasted and disappearing quickly after.

“8’s & Nine’s” is the track that got me introduced to this release. When a friend put it on, I was listening, but I was like: holy shit when I heard the drop. It’s not just about the first drop, it’s not just about the second drop. It’s not even about the drops at this time, because when this track gets your attention, it slaps you in the face, and you’re its slave. Really huge kicks throughout the field and clever programming of the rhythmics with a Jamaican sample of the ‘soundsystem’ culture appearing at moments, this track is consisted of two main elements, the poly-rhythmic techno introduction, and the drum and bass breakage that follows after it.

Overall, this LP is consisted of very clever production and a variety of sounds that come from a dark and industrial sound in it’s very core, or soul of it all. Funny enough, the bright cover-art suggests a fun and bright listen, but what the music underneath it gives is a glimpse of a huge and dark industrial club that at its core is drum and bass, but shifts and breaks rules all the way throughout with stellar techno production followed on every single track. Definitely an all-killer release with a distinct story to tell, and doing it very confidently without losing momentum throughout.

This is what Fearful & Mtwn say about this release:
“Following on our first EP, ‘Collisions’, we wanted to explore the use of modular synths, and also hardware, in more depth. Exordium was crafted from countless modular jams, passed back and forth between London and Liege, and polished into a piece of work that captures our love for club music, with an experimental edge. We wanted to get out for a moment from the 170 which we are a bit more known for. Hopefully you will enjoy this exploration into our shared sound and influences as much as we enjoyed creating it.”
— Fearful & Mtwn