European premiere

Since joining forces in 2017, H31R – made up of rapper and vocalist maassai and producer-composer JWords – have been creating distinct, strange, and agile experimental electronics and hip hop. Evolving from the playful sample-driven production of their debut ve​·​loc​·​i​·​ty (2020), their latest release, HeadSpace (2023) on Ninja Tune imprint Big Dada, is a synthy assemblage of glitched-out grooves and crisp sequencing covered with a coating of smooth bars. You could call it “machine rap,” but there is nothing stilted or robotic about it: it’s vibrant with siphoned energy and loose circuitry running in all directions. Where ve​·​loc​·​i​·​ty had a warbled, nostalgic tint to some of its boom-bap inspired production, the songs on HeadSpace push forwards only. “That’s what life is. Shit be going fast, moving forward. And you really can’t rewind it,” maassai raps on “Train of Thought,” where the effortless nonchalance of her verses are met by the wild energy of JWords’s beats. The drums in “Rotation” are half-jazz, half-breakcore, and fully hypnotising. Elsewhere on the album, “Shadow Self” creeps in the murky swamplands between speed garage and R&B, while “Air it Out,” with its muffled techno backing, is a secret club banger. This is the unpredictable world of H31R. Pulling from influences as widely separated as jazz and Jersey club, their music feels truly experimental in a moment where popular music moves closer and closer to full homogenisation.