- Get in shape with the strangest workout record you’ll hear all year.
- Pablo Arrangoiz is a man of many ideas, sounds and aliases. As Baüzer Vep, he turns out no wave-inspired synth pop. Señor Faxwater is like chopped and screwed musique concrète, while Glue Boys is glitchy IDM and breaks and El Gusano is for experimental club edits of everyone from Crystal Castles to Chris Isaak via Sean Paul. This is just a sampling of his many aliases, and doesn’t even touch on his collaborative projects. If you got a sense of vertigo following that list, just imagine how he feels. Fair to say that Arrangoiz is a voracious producer whose studio neighbors must be constantly scratching their heads.
The latest release to emerge from the Arrangoiz universe is under his DJ Fitness alias. At first pass, The DJ Fitness Program, and the imprint it lands on—Bruno Schmidt’s Domesticated—might seem like an unlikely alliance. Schmidt is a name usually associated with the dance music’s “vinyl-only” corner (think the neo-minimal house tunes of Gwenan and The Ghost). Arrangoiz, on the other hand, played one of last year’s most outrageous Boiler Room sets on his laptop. A closer look, though, would reveal that Arrangoiz first rose to prominence as Goiz with some seriously funky deep house. And Schmidt, who can Discogs blind buy with the best of them, will occasionally put out a trap mix. The DJ Fitness Program is a wonderfully eccentric record filled with creaky synthesizers and strange samples that chucks electro, SoundCloud rap, acid, downtempo and Chicago house into the cast iron and lets it fry.
The DJ Fitness Program, like all good health regimes, is split into two distinct parts—a downtempo warm-up to help get the blood flowing and, later on, sweat-inducing workouts. The first disc captures the warm-up, moving from chunky hip-hop to jazzy New Age. At slower tempos, Arrangoiz isn’t afraid to get a bit creepy. “Get Swole” is eerie and claustrophobic, with electro 808s and tinny snare hits that threaten to fall out of time underneath layers of feedback and rapper BuGzMAIN adding some helium vocals over the top. The result is like listening to a pitched down DJ Stingray and Lil Peep collaboration. “Schvitzing” is—as the name might suggest—like jumping into a sauna and letting the toxins out. But lest you get too comfortable with the jazzy chords and bossa nova beat, Arrangoiz lets a haunted horn solo drift in.
The second disc is built around jacking drums as Arrangoiz ups the tempo and the energy. “Activ8” and “Look Your Best” feature some seriously funky slapped bass that moves through almost chintzy house drum programming. “Microton” is like listening to a LIES remix of an [ar:pia:r] record—it’s a blown-out loop, but there is intricate detailing underneath the feedback that would work at hour 96 of a Sunwaves marathon. Arrangoiz is even able to make everyone’s least favorite workout into a banger. “Leg Day” combines jacking drums with a gurgling acid line, making Arrangoiz’s Chicago homage the record’s biggest banger. With such a chameleonic producer working across so many genres, it’s easy to imagine how range might usurp depth here. The DJ Fitness Program, however, is focused and coherent. The record constructs a miniature world of spandex, 808s and scuzzy samples.
-
Tracklist
- 01. Out Of Order feat. Sensational
02. Healthy Beat feat. Ez Dee
03. Get Swole
04. Schvitzing
05. Activ8
06. Look Your Best
07. Mictroton
08. Leg Day
DJ Fitness – The DJ Fitness Program · Album Review ⟋ RA
