Battles - Juice B Mixed (2020) [Hi-Res]

Like all Battles releases, the group’s full-length Juice B Crypts is an album which bursts at the seams with invention. This remix EP find Shed, Delroy Edwards, DJ Nigga Fox and two members of black midi channelling that same experimental energy into some fantastically bold productions.

DJ Dairy & DJ Orient’s ‘Sterling Bridge’ sets the tone for the record in an exuberant manner. Rather than focussing on a single Battles original, this track sees the black midi pair summoning the spirit and sounds of Juice B Crypts as a whole. The result is a high-wire production which phases between glitching house, throbbing techno and maximalist post-trance over the course of its five-minute runtime. Shed’s flip of ‘IZM’ is similarly impressive, the jumpy rhythms hovering between classic IDM and booming Berghain techno.

Delroy Edwards is generally known for his grainy house and freakbeat productions, but he pushes out into strange new territory on his entry here. Simply entitled ‘Juice B Crypts’, Edwards slows things down to a 90-bpm lope, and the combination of lurching drum loops and circuit-malfunction synths makes for one of the most brilliantly unusual wave music tunes you’ll ever hear. Finally, ‘Carnaval Supremo (DJ Nigga Fox Remix)’ closes this unique record out by bringing the tempo back up, the Príncipe affiliate opening with a skittering IDM groove before developing the track into a typically idiosyncratic take on Kuduro.

This remix EP finds a range of cutting-edge producers putting their own spin on tracks from Battles’ thrilling Juice B Crypts full-length.