Diving into the archives has launched Mike Paradinas into a completely new era. Backed by steadily dropping compilations since 2013, 2022 heralds the 25th anniversary of his seminal album Lunatic Harness. With a reignited spark for making music inspired by remastering this milestone record, he has not only released a wealth of material since 2021 under his Tusken Raiders name, but also opened the floodgates to new µ-Ziq records dropping left and right throughout the year.
Hello is the final piece to the Magic Pony Ride story that began with the Goodbye EP, showing no shortage of the breakbeat and electronica excellence that Paradinas has been meticulously curating as of late. The fantasy harps, high energy rhythms, and colourful melodies of the era reach new intensities across these buoyant and bombastic tracks, evident all at once in the sugary and ecstatic ‘Magic Pony Ride, Pt.3’, and the quickfire breakage of ‘Ávila’ that hits a sweet spot between lush electronic textures and furious drum and bass.
Elsewhere, frozen tones like the dialling of a phone open ‘Hello’, with glacial pianos revealing a more sky blue colour as whimsical breakbeats fly in with their head in the clouds. Anxious plucks set the scene for a jungle banger on ‘Iggy’s Song’, featuring a “slowed down sample of Mike’s son screaming” manipulated into a revving sound that kicks up smoke clouds. Tracks like ‘Modulating Angels’ and ‘Pentagonal Antiprism’ lean into a darker atmosphere, where metallic beats are welded together with infrasonic wobbles and sirens wailing into the eeriness.
Rounding out a plentiful year, µ-Ziq closes the Magic Pony Ride era with a stunning selection of tracks on Hello.
