Slava Balasanov spent the first 12 years of his life in Moscow prior to moving to Chicago. He devoted a few years to playing jazz guitar, abandoned the instrument, and immersed himself in electronic music. He was a quick study. By 2008, he was releasing his own productions on a label he co-founded. In 2012, he issued an impressive EP on
Daniel Lopatin's
Software label;
Soft Control showed him to be an omnivorous aesthete with a keen ability to synthesize heady, ambient, buoyant house and U.K. bass while putting his own spin on the intricate footwork sound birthed in his second hometown.
Raw Solutions, also issued on
Software, is a smooth and occasionally stirring continuation that switches tacks with such frequency that pigeon-hole evasion seems like a conscious goal. Like
Soft Control's "I've Got Feelings Too," "I Know" samples
Britney Spears' spoken intro to "I'm a Slave 4 U" and is a low-profile track with hypnotic textures and knocking/rattling bass, almost as sleek as
2000F &
J Kamata's "You Don't Know What Love Is." "Girl Like Me" weaves a forward
Ciara quote into one of the album's most intense and enveloping tracks, full of low-end frequencies that can be felt in the chest. The footwork-inspired tracks, duly stuffed with tightly wound percussion that alternately patters and batters, are neither as bracing nor as memorable. Surprisingly, there's only one ambient cut, the closing "Wit U" -- a dizzying sequence of vocal fragments that lacks the emotive quality of the preceding EP's "Whirlpool" and "Swan." ~ Andy Kellman
