[Berkane Sol]

The gaudy, neon-on-black synth sounds of the Sunset Strip circa 1986 haven’t been this trendy and in vogue since, well, 1986, but one of electronic music’s fondest muses right now is the stuff of bad haircuts and worse fashion. There’s something deeply evocative about the combination of tactile analogue synths with deep caverns of obviously artificial reverb, even (or maybe especially) for those who never experienced such sounds in their heyday. Producers as varied as Boxcutter, Oriol, Hyetal, and so many more — not to mention a growing legion of indie rockers and cassette peddlers — all explore the sound, and the latest to enter the fray convincingly is London producer Aleks Zen who debuts with a single on Geiom’s always intriguing and eclectic Berkane Sol imprint.

The two tracks Zen delivers here are somehow both earnestly honest and transparently fake: while they skew towards a specific era and sound past — early eighties analogue funk via West Coast hip-hop — they just do it so damn well that it’s easy enough to see past their blatant derivations. Zen’s synths whistle obliviously and twirl around the rhythms in a way that feels almost gleefully disconnected, a freewheeling joy so separate from his peers’ often oppressively quantized tracks — ain’t nuthin’ but a G thang, really. The closest analogue would be Joker and his purple associates, but Zen comes at his tracks from an entirely different angle than dubstep, taking in jazz-flecked broken beat as well as early hip-hop influences and applying them to a more contemporary template. The percussion is sufficiently chintzy, lacking the snare sonic boom of so much dubstep-informed dance music, and its sub power comes from warm, snaking feelers (“High Life”) or the slightest hint of oscillating fuzz (“Pimp Shoes”) rather than the prickly spore clouds of a producer like Joker. The playful and loose sound reflects not only the wider-than-normal reach of Berkane Sol but also the label’s unique penchant for musicianship, and it’s a strong debut for Aleks Zen that shows promise even through its most trendy and derivative aspects.