Becoming Real
London, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
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The UK-based artist who blends hyper-personal quavering vocals with dense layers of busy electronics that are informed as much by the homemade K Records aesthetic as they are by the world’s recent obsession with dubstep. After the jump read our Q+A with Ridler and download his remix of Banjo or Freakout‘s “Left it Alone” below.
Read more: http://www.thefader.com/2009/10/01/qa-becoming-real-left-it-alone-remix-premiere-mp3/#ixzz1WbQuJnkj
- The Fadar
Having sold out his debut white label release on Tough Love Records last year, Becoming Real is back in 2010 with the release of his tracks 'Fast Motion' and 'Jen's Clock' via Ramp Recordings on 21st June. In attempts to delve into his haunting electronica, the London-based producer talks zebra print caps and alter egos to Dazed...
- Dazed and Confused
Becoming Real: The spectre of eskibeat
Even beyond your typical channels of dance music creation and interaction – the lone bedroom auteur, putting together beats on a dying laptop – this year there’s been a growing school of musicians paring down existing styles and rebuilding them in new forms. And those techniques aren’t genre-limited: in the US the hypnagogic pop set continue to break down the boundaries of reality and dream through fusions of old and new, while the UK has spawned the post-punk/dub deconstructions of Forest Swords, James Blake’s subversions of the pop song and Guido’s colour-saturated visions of modern R’n’B. With the new Spectre EP under his Becoming Real alias, Toby Ridler has done the same to the austere minimalism of Wiley’s early riddims, infusing them with greater rhythmic fluidity and a playful undercurrent largely lacking in the deadly serious aggression of eskibeat. - Drowned In Sound
Rightly so too, but whilst the Becoming Real sound sits comfortably amongst the current wave of emerging dance talent (Blondes, Silver Columns et al) - it’s the sheer knack of making the chilling and apocalypse looming recent single ‘Fast Motion’ turn into something nearing on euphoric that really gets us hot under the collar. - The Line of Best Fit
Ghosts permeate Becoming Real’s music, from ‘The Thing”s ghoulish shapes, twisted around banisters, to the quivering whispers in the background of ‘Like Me’, his new Trim-featuring single. - FACT
Becoming Real songs sound like they're undergoing a miraculous metamorphosis, as though they've awoken from uneasy dreams to find themselves transformed into something monstrous and amazing - NME
Discography
EP Spectre - Not Even December Records 2010
CLOSER / ANTARCTIC CITY - Cold World Industries May 23rd 2011
Photos
Bio
He started as a grime/footwork hybrid taking in as much influence from early Eski-beat as from the growing Chicago-based Footwork scene. Distilling these influences into his own haunted dreamscape pallet, he makes sounds that haunt themselves, music with its own memory, the sub-conscious of London city given voice through his creations.
The name is a reference to the Lacanian order of the Real , which, very much like Becoming Reals music , is always insisting and always mutating.
Having toured with the likes of Salem and Mount Kimbie , and played shows with Actress, Hudson Mohawke, Terror Danjah, Jamie xx and many others, Becoming Reals live shows are as potent as his recordings. The next 12 months will see much more of both.
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