A couple minutes into Sd Laika's just-released "Idiot Thug mix," we hear the words of an older gentleman looking back on his life: "In fact, I don't know now whether I'm really awake or dreaming. My whole past seems like one long dream." That older gentleman is none other than the novelist Henry Miller, quoted from an interview he gave in Tom Schiller's 1975 documentary, Henry Miller: Asleep and Awake, but it also feels like the perfect mission statement for the piece of electronic music we're in the middle of listening to. Clocking in at a breakneck 14 and a half minutes, it jumps druggily and episodically from one fully formed sound world to the next, like a shorter, thuggier, less kind version of Arca's 2013 &&&&& mixtape. Sometimes the beats rattle like an assault rifle, sometimes they peel away to reveal a luke-warm, faded ambience, by mostly, it's a pretty nightmarish ride all the way through, tapping the same instrumental grime palette fans will recall from the American artist's 2012 EP on Visionist's Lost Codes label, Unknown Vectors. Without revealing the producer's identity, the Tri Angle Records Soundcloud states that the mix is all originals ("100% Sd), and that a Sd Laika release is forthcoming soon.
Stream: Sd Laika, "Idiot Thug" mix