insha: dysplazia

Classically-trained Boston producer Kaan Erbay, under the name Insha, explores the push-and-pull of tension and relief with his debut album Dysplazia, a record that drags familiar sounds into shadowy, wayward new places. Punctuated by barely-audible vocal samples, the album takes cues from artists such as Burial and Arca, stripping rhythms from their usual context and burying them beneath swathes of noise and abstract sound. As a founder of Boston's DRAW collective, Erbay has developed his ear DJing countless parties and settling on a sound that straddles usual divides. On Dysplazia he takes influence from R&B, video game and film music and British dance music and manages to fuse these disparate sounds into a beguiling, melancholy collage. Pounding beats crash and crumble as fizzy neon synths flourish and fade rapidly and voices chatter and scream. Erbay subverts these tropes with the hand of a DJ but exhibits a rare vulnerability. It's this restraint twinned with his compositional skill that makes Dysplazia so crucial - anything but a bundle of dance tracks, it's a widescreen, narrative experience that needs to be absorbed in its entirety. RIYL: Arca, Burial, Actress, Rabits. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Edition of 500.