S
ometimes the only way of moving forwards is by looking back. In electronic music the 1980s continue to be a primary source of inspiration for DJs and producers. Such a fecund decade, its multitude of innovations are a rich
goldmine that's yet to be exhausted. Many of the blueprints for dance today were set. Styles, technology, culture. Electro, hip-hop, house. While rinsing that '80s vibe is a cynical exploit for some, for others it represents a fresh method. Especially when the artist in question has a unique vantage point or a freaky imagination. Ikonika has both. It's been three years since Ikonika, aka Sara Abdel-Hamid, recorded her last long-player for Hyperdub, 'Contact, Love, Want, Have', and the topography of club culture has changed immeasurably. Back in 2008, the Hounslow, London producer emerged as one of the most promising new acts on a roster of Hyperdub artists brimming with originality and icy cool. Her first two singles, 'Millie' and 'Please' arrived bathed in bright, pitch-bent eerie synths, neon phantasms hovering over grime claps and digi-dub bass, marauding oddball keys and clouds of sonic atmospherica. The album, with the menacing dust devils of 'Sahara Michael' and the submerged undulating garage of 'Fish', was even more far out, adding the simulated emotion and sonic weirdness of computer game soundtracks and lambent electro to a sound that was unmistakably hers and impossible to imitate. Though she was never really a dubstep artist, Sara materialized in its milieu, a brief span of time in which a set of producers appeared who were free
to experiment with tempos, time signatures and beats, combining styles freely without restriction. In 2013 many have moved away from broken beats and dubstep's hard-to-pin-down identity. Things have become more conservative in dance, with most cleaving to the club-friendly 4/4 kicks of house and techno. But taking influences from the past doesn't mean dumbing down for Ikonika. For her and a handful of others, it's a new interpretation of history, a classic narrative arranged in a pattern unheard of before. And on her new record 'Aerotropolis', it feels like something genuinely new. “The whole album is this kind of fantasy of me going into a time machine and, without being too contrived, it's just a kind of exploration for me as a producer, and I feel very happy that I went there!” grins Sara, as we catch her on the phone in the run-up to the album's release. For her, 'Aerotropolis' is a way of interpreting the beats she'd become increasingly fascinated by as her DJ sets became more 4/4-focused. “I guess I became more orientated towards house and techno tracks in my sets and for that reason it kind of trickled into my production over time,” she admits. “Freestyle house really kind of works for me, because the melodies were always there, the singing was amazing and the drums are really hard and really rigid at times, really complex at times, and I really have that attraction to those brass synths and those really coarse cowbells. There's just something about them!” she says. ELEMENT OF SURPRISE Indeed, it's safe to say that a lot of heads will be surprised by 'Aerotropolis'. Taking the ideas of the wicked 'PR812 (Tech House Is Boring Mix)' — released on her own Hum + Buzz label last year — to their natural conclusion, Sara's new muse is electronic funk, from Latin freestyle to early house, the boogie disco of labels West End and Prelude to the body-popping of Newcleus. Her dazzling synths and eccentric vision are intact, but now, there's a new accessibility, irresistibly danceable and infectious. It's Ikonika but wrought in a new image. 'Eternal Mode' is all 808 cowbells, a deadly electro bassline that sounds as if it's beamed direct from the Danceteria, clamped to a funked-up house rhythm track and a synth that soars through the skies as an impossibly lithe digital dragon; 'Mr Cake' is for the breakers, uplifting Freeez funk, Rockers Revenge era 3000.
It's the addition of Sara's sparkling synth sprites and jolly micro melodies that mean this could only be made now, and that reinterpretation of the old school with her unique approach was the very foundation of Ikonika's battle-plan for the record. Never having experienced disco or more importantly acid house rave culture first time around, her perceptions of it, she says, are shaped by her hearing the records of the time, and by the stories of her older sisters and mum. “[It was] kind of trying to revisit something I know nothing about because I wasn't born at that time, and I just had my sister's stories, and occasionally my mum would tell hers, and it just became something that is quite magical to me.” Ikonika's part of a generation of artists whose formative dance experiences were within dubstep. They're making the most interesting new mutations of house now. Revisiting the past
with a dispassionate detachment, they're able to shape it to their own ends and add their own sonic signatures. But it's not just the sound of house music that holds an allure. For Sara, it's also the ways of working, the merging of human and machine. Working with analogue hardware rather than purely within the computer has allowed her to invest more of herself in the music, keeping in the slight imperfections rather than having everything pristine but soulless. “It was kind of a lesson in machines and hardware and really trying to be physical with the music rather than just staring at a screen and doing a few clicks,” Sara claims. “It really makes a difference, like even the twist of a knob you can hear through the audio and I really like that, and grains — I think [DJ/producer and Night Slugs co-owner] Bok Bok said recently he likes grains between sounds and that kind of makes your sound more human. We're all using machines and electronics but allowing mistakes and not letting everything be so perfect all the time... you know, you want to hear that warmth and connection with the music.”
The use of analogue equipment also signifies a break with previous ways of working for Sara, a way of developing her sound rather than becoming stuck in a loop of using the same methods. “These things are more accessible now, through eBay and also communication through the internet, like swapping bits of hardware. To me, it's all just learning and I wanna learn everything! I don't want to be stuck in the old ways. I was getting a bit too comfortable with banging out tunes in an hour and not feeling very satisfied by it, like using the same palette over again, I really exhausted that old palette, and it's just about trying to start again and press the reset button and do it that way, from the bottom I guess.”
BEACH MODE The biggest surprise of 'Aerotropolis' is its first single 'Beach Mode (Keep it Simple)'. A lush Balearic house cut with zephyrs of lush electronics breezing through its electro bassline, it's also a catchy song, with the mellifluous vocals of new Hyperdub signing Jessy Lanza making it the poppiest thing Ikonika's ever made. It's also something that Sara's rightly immensely proud of, a tricky challenge that's paid dividends. “I'd given [Hyperdub boss] Kode9 a demo album, and he was listening through it and he said, 'I really wanna hear some vocals on here, just to see what happens and I've got Jessy, who's gonna release on Hyperdub, and maybe she'll be into it'. So he let me hear a few tracks from her and I fell in love with her vocals. They're so kind of innocent, they remind me of Aaliyah as well, just this really soft, sensitive voice, you can tell there's some hurt there. “I sent her the track, the dub version of the single, and she wrote this amazing hook and Jeremy [Greenspan of the Junior Boys who writes with Jessy] wrote this amazing simple synth with some chords underneath. When I first took it into the studio I was planning on just putting the vocal on top of the original, but that didn't work... I just took the vocals, changed everything to how I wanted it, without synths or anything, then started picking out bits and just wrapping the song around the vocal, and making sure the vocal
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