Relaxer - Break (2024)

What happens when dubby drum & bass meets Dischord’s post-punk colossus Black Eyes? “Break” is the new EP from NY’s Relaxer, the long running alias of Daniel Martin-McCormick (Black Eyes, Ital and co-founder of Dripping), and it signals a decisive shift in his music.

Prompted by friends to write a drum & bass live set just as Black Eyes was reuniting, the results didn’t quite fit the d&b genre. But it felt right. Quick, nimble, with room for the ferocity of his favorite post punk and some of the spaciousness of dub. Evergreen vibes, really, but seen from a fresh perspective.

Honed over a period of two years, the five tracks on “Break” fuse Relaxer’s careening, technoid sounds with free jazz-tinted drum programming, snarling sound design and spacious echo trails. It’s a perfect fit for 29 Speedway’s future-facing, exploratory anti-genre approach to electronics. The tape features two remixes by the singular DJ Marcelle and mastering by Dubplates & Mastering. Daniel tells his side of the story below:

“Two years ago my friends who run the drum ‘n’ bass party Headznite asked me to write a live set for a Ukraine fundraiser they were putting on. Right at the same time, my punk band Black Eyes was having our first practices in 20 years, which meant I was re-training my body to scream at top volume and high registers and to lay into my guitar at full force. In those same months, Dripping was forming and ideas were flying for crazy, boundary-pushing lineups. I had just finished writing the meditative composition suite “In Softening Air” and was feeling the call; it was time to let it rip.

Everything poured into that live set for Headznite, and a new style was born. Relaxer had begun as a decisively techno project, but pushing the BPMs and working in drum breaks tweaked the formula enough to cut any lingering ties with that ethos.

Over the next two years I kept on it, writing more, recording, pushing the technique and exploring the sound. “Break” is the first time any of this work has been made public. Sometimes a detour can hack your brain. My first dance 12” as Ital was supposed to be a one-off side project to my punk band and it ended up taking over my life. Now punk music is calling asking for the debt to be repaid. Fuck it.”