Vicious Circles

Planet Mu release Vicious Circles, the debut 7 Track EP by Sinjin Hawke and Zora Jones, who aside from producing music also run the audio-visual production unit 'Fractal Fantasy'. Zora released several collaborations on last year's Visceral Minds 2 including Dark Matter with Planet Mu's Jlin, while Sinjin has collaborated with DJ Rashad, Just Blaze and MikeQ, and also produced music for monoliths like Kanye West and Frank Ocean. Remarkably, given the breadth of their work, Vicious Circles is their first collaborative EP, and the first time either have released a vinyl record too. The EP is a great showcase for the duo's emotional, maximalist chimeras of abstract pounding beats. From the punchy, circular, grandiose build-ups of opener Vicious Circles, to the unyielding melancholy of God with its sinister Bulgarian choir sample against a peak Timbaland-era rhythm, the record's potent synths and manipulated vocals are both simultaneously fierce and friendly. Source of Conflict is a poised dance between pulsing ambient textures and drilling beats, while Lurk 101 pits a volley of abstracted juke toms up against a hammering drumline. BabyboySosa feels like drum-less drill, manipulating vocals into strange alien shapes over a bassline before spiraling toms and hi-hats start to form a forceful march. The EP concludes on the love anthem And You Were One with a chipmunked vocal running through its wonky chorus of bent notes and chords