Duro - volatile

Like headknocking in the asylum. I first discovered Duro through Cise Greeny’s Accession last year, enamoured by how bittersweet and sombre the keys were. Then heard talented NY emcees spit over the same beautiful beats on CHAINLINK, until I finally got to volatile. Duro’s beats generally, but especially on my favourite tape here, sound like echoed beats blasting out of the The Stanley House mansion, or like The Caretaker if he was really into instrumental hiphop. These beats knock in a way that feels haunting and genuinely ghostly, like spirits leaving the crooked piano as the strings break and sustain pedal falters on and off. There’s an immense sense of space on every piano section here, carrying an eeriness like the sample’s original recording studio of the samples was full of incense with a single lamp lit. Duro turns the vastness into something that feels cocophonous but somehow groovy, especially on a track like ‘delusion’, where little sets of tripled hihats give way to crunchy snares and pulsing kicks. Having said this, some of my favourite moments on volatile are in its simplest moments, just letting an evocative piano loop ride out with powerful drums and a touch of glitch behind the steering wheel, sometimes driving with great collaborators but often going solo. I’ve loved so many of his projects since but this is the one I keep coming back to; a tight collection of nocturnal out-of-body beats, and an essential for late-night listening.

KEY BEAT: curtain - might be one of the most straightforward tracks here but draws you right into the tape from the start, like you’re watching the creepy figure in the corner of the cover art perform contemporary dance.