Review Summary: The only metal album you need this year
One of drum and bass' most assiduous MVPs, Kasra is practically a one-man institution. Between his work as a DJ and his management of the underground label Critical Music, his contributions to the genre are already prolific enough, but once in a blue moon, he carves out enough time to tend to the fickle needs of his own creative process and add to his small but meticulously crafted solo discography. His excellent 2018 4-track EP
Ski Mask was the perfect calling card to this end, flexing club-friendly basslines and mercilessly economic song structures that bopped, dipped and scrammed exactly as the moment demanded – all in all, exactly what you would hope and expect from an acclaimed drum and bass DJ whose knack for reading the room was evidently a key factor in the way he fostered his own style.
His latest and first (!?) full-length release
Dream Metal, is by all accounts the most ambitious thing he's put out under his own name so far, boasting seven collaborations across eight tracks, each of which offers a fresh variation on his style while reasserting its core strengths. Moreover, the collaborators in question are a perfectly even ratio of grime MCs and fellow drum and bass producers, and since the MC features are interspersed with production-centric tracks, neither side risks upstaging the other. Among the MC features, Riko Dan makes for an early highlight with his propulsive performance on "Talk Up" – though perhaps a little insistent in its double-tracked vocals and one-word overdubs, this feature drips with adrenaline and suggests a more muscular side to Kasra's sound. He later outdoes it as such on "Running Red", which sees veteran MC Killa P take the mic over one of Kasra's most earth-shaking beats and throttling basslines. Kasra sees this off with jagged edges and off-kilter accentuations aplenty, making for one of his most volatile tracks to date and a bruising highlight. Though I'm unconvinced that Gardna's bar-heavy feature on the opener "Spaceman" was the most momentous way for the album to kick off, Kasra's judgement in MCs proves unsurprisingly on-point throughout the tracklist.
His producer collaborations are no less striking, pushing the boundaries of his style in a variety of satisfying directions. This is straightforward enough on the Visla collab "Azure VIP", the record's clubbiest cut, but perhaps the most disarming track of the whole collection is the Yaano collaboration "Shatter". This one teases an uplifting, melodically-saturated approach that openly contrasts with Kasra's spartan style – the two find themselves in open conflict throughout the track's latter minutes, but this never spins off into outright derailment: the extent to which Yaano distorts his spiralling arpeggiations to repatriate them alongside Kasra's airtight beats makes for an inspired match and a surprise highlight. However, it's a telling sign that "bb.oo", the sole track where Kasra receives exclusive credit, counts among
Dream Metal's most confident and dynamic material – the rest of the album might make a great case for how open his sound is to fresh possibilities, but the foundations Kasra himself has laid are rock solid.
