#3441 Feed Me - High Street Creeps

4/5 Never underestimate Jon Gooch. His early stuff got filed under dubstep, but Big Adventure was squiggly, jazzy, and alive beyond the scene.

If Spotify stream counts are anything to go by, his worst songs are his most popular: goofy bro-rave bangers about love, coke, and headshots. But you don't get the sense that's where Gooch's heart's at. Sure, the four most-played songs on his latest are the worst, most vocal-drenched ones, in between's where it gets interesting.

Ominous, tense, clever towers of synths, twisting out of shape, starting and stopping, never letting you get too comfortable. Take Satanic Panic, the closest thing we've gotten to that golden age sound in years: it builds and builds and builds, not to a drop but to a stuttering squonky switchup, crystallizing into a glorious lead that battles stuttering infection. A floorless midsection floats out to a proper trapdoor into malfunctioning synth solo, before that melody carries you home. There's no drop, no chorus, just helixical, mutating synth contrails in an endless duel.

There's not a good full-album listen to be had here, those vocals really are a drag, but the highlights are high enough to pull out and let run wild