Djrum - Under Tangled Silence Review

Under Tangled Silence is intent and self-aware, slipping between categories and resisting definition, yet still rooted in soul, most clearly in the unadorned piano where the artist quietly shows himself.

“It starts with the piano”, says Felix Manuel describing his composition process, as does Under Tangled Silence, his 3rd album as Djrum. Tinkling gradually into life on the opening track A Tune For Us, like a living breathing organism amidst the sound of raindrops and birdsong, piano notes build and cascade until the instrument itself becomes like the sound of rainfall, nourishing and drenching everything it touches. Edited and layered breakbeats unobtrusively join the mix, creating a lush miniature symphony that rolls by with the easy motion of a landscape viewed from a moving vehicle.

Much of Under Tangled Silence consists in this interplay, between the rich organic sounds of piano, flute, string and percussion, and digitally generated glitches, chirps and squawks. Not that there’s ever a tension between the two elements - human and machine - as Djrum constantly weaves and plaits, threading his silky piano playing around chopped breakbeats in a way that never feels forced, but rather intuitive and exploratory.

This synergy could be thanks to the relationship Felix Manuel has with the tools of production. “I have a very emotional relationship with my machines”, he says, recounting an incident that saw him lose hundreds of hours of work when his laptop underwent a power surge that fried the hard drive. Although nearly everything he created during the pandemic lockdowns was lost, a few data files were salvaged. Some of these corrupted files, “broken robots” as Manuel describes them, can be found on Under Tangled Silence, manifesting as stuttering changes in tempo as the digital 4/4 grid tries to keep up with the fluid motions of a human player.

This catastrophe - surely the worst nightmare for any kind of creator - demonstrated the fragility of the machines and lines of code we place so much faith in, and for Djrum at least was a realisation of how fallible, how human, his machines really were. Although a lot of work was lost, the experience of creating the music was not, and he was able to recreate several ideas and entwine them into what became, Under Tangled Silence. 

Beguiling, entrancing, playful, at times overwhelming, the record moves with the exploratory, intuitive feel of an improvisation. Rolls and arpeggios of sumptuous piano form the constant thread, around which Djrum ties in elements from across the spectrum of contemporary electronic music. On early highlight Waxcap, a future-garage beat emerges from cymbal rushes and new-age windchimes, as if you’ve stumbled across a rave in a rainforest glade. Discordant piano is overwhelmed by snarling wails of distortion that transform into menacing dancehall on L’Ancienne. The hyper BPM of footwork can be heard in the rapidly syncopated beats that somehow emerge from more new-age tinkling and field recordings on Three Foxes Chasing Each Other. 

This carefree attitude to genre boundaries is reflected in Djrum’s approach to DJ-ing, for which he is at least equally well-known. Strictly vinyl-only, he spins across three decks, mixing dubstep, garage and UK bass with upper reaches of dance music’s BPM range: breakcore and gabba, and everything in between. To successfully transport the mix across such gulfs in tempo and vibe, he deploys ambient and drone-music, spinning out unique soundscapes with his fingers darting over the cross-fader or scratching records like a performer spinning plates. 

Manuel said it was a conscious effort with Under Tangled Silence to create something “timeless but futuristic”, which is probably why no track ever dwells too long on a sound that could pigeonhole it into a particular genre. So it almost feels jarring when the instantly recognisable amen break erupts briefly into focus on Let Me. For a few bars it feels as though it’s going to settle into a straight up jungle track - the genre with which the sample is synonymous - but just as soon as it appears, it vanishes again to be replaced by more virtuoso beat juggling.

Some may find this restlessness a little much to bear. And the record’s sequencing seems to guard against that, with the more chilled and linear pieces stacked at the front, building to a dense and frenzied crescendo. By the time we reach the closing track Sycamore, the music seems to fold over on itself and the track could almost be the entirety of the album compacted into 11 minutes. At this super-condensed level, the drum hits are so close the BPM blows right past 200 to become more like a buzz. This ultimately disintegrates into pulses of reverb and the piano re-emerges once again, tying the thread back to where it all began.

Under Tangled Silence is an intentional and self-aware record, almost wilfully slipping between categories and resisting definition. But for all that artful poise, it’s also a record with a soul, and particularly in the unadorned piano, the sound of an artist daring to show something of themselves in their music.