Bintus

If you’ve spent any amount of time on techno dancefloors in recent years, you’ve probably heard a Bintus track - even if you didn’t realise it. Perhaps it was the Dopplereffekt beatdown of ‘Advanced Fuel’, or glutinous 303 banger ‘Drink Ye From The Acid Chalice’, or one of the 133.33bpm oddities found on his recent Live* & Locked LP. In any case, its steroidal heft and sense of gleeful abandon would have been pretty difficult to ignore. This is dance music that confuses and amuses in equal measure; a machine-funk sucker-punch with a irresistible sense of fun. Milo Smee’s own DJ sets follow a similar path. Inspired by the quick-cut hardcore DJs of his early 90s youth, an hour with Bintus is a high-intensity romp through the weirdest bits of the rave canon - those distant regions where terror and hilarity become one. And with Smee’s hardware-based live set debuted at the Berghain in early 2014 (and its anarchic potential already showcased on Live* & Locked), his capacity to bewilder looks set to increase in the years to come. In the past, Smee has been no stranger to longform extravagance - 20 minute Italo disco epic ‘Heavenz Gate’, under his Binary Chaffinch alias, took two years to complete. But as Bintus, Smee has directed his energies towards ferocious concision. Each new track under the name is a short, sharp and strange shock to the dancefloor, referencing several of dance music’s moments of futurist rupture - first generation electro, vintage acid house, early 90s hardcore - in a manner which feels utterly contemporary. As such, Bintus, though by no means Smee’s first musical project, feels like the culmination of his considerable raving history. He harboured acid desires as far back as the early 90s, when he narrowly missed the Summer of Love, but it wasn’t until 2011 that he would realise them, spending a fevered three days with a borrowed 303 and a rapidly-filling harddrive. From there, Bintus was born - and with it Smee’s label, Power Vacuum. Featuring music from rave veterans Mark Broom and EDMX alongside Smee’s own productions and a growing cast of new-schoolers including Objekt and J. Tijn, the imprint is a fine example of how Smee cuts across trends and eras in pursuit of his singular aesthetic.