Against the monotonous paradigm of four-on-the-floor pacifiers which ruminate across global dancefloors, few projects distinguish themselves more than ABADIR’s Mutate. It is, as its namesake suggests, not a clichéd array of mash-ups and genre fusions, but a diverse ‘mutation’ of club sounds, forming something entirely new, entirely definitive.

Its conception, at least ideologically, arose from experimenting in a DJ set: “I was trying out Maqsoum loops at high bpm blended with Jungle tracks. I noticed that the Maqsoum rhythm complements the Amen break in a refreshing way”. The 2022 album has come to define ABADIR’s club sound, and since has been evolved into his brief but brilliant 2024 collaboration with Nahash, Marchadair.

Yet whilst the Egyptian producer has explored similar sonic territory both post and prior his third studio album (his first with Shanghai-based label SVBKVLT), the material here has always felt distinctly self-contained. At nine tracks and just under forty minutes, Mutate is a taut project, but no less rich. There is no sense it could benefit from an extra song or two, nor is its overall quality bludgeoned by excess. Strong bookends and an intriguing interlude provide a symmetry – a deft balance which makes for addictively easy digestion.

‘Bass Belly’ does everything an opener should. It’s enticing but does not reveal too much. We are given glimpses of the sounds and structures which are maximised across the project: expressive rolls of hand percussion, joyous chants and shouts, and those opulent low ends which invite the biggest system it can latch its frequencies onto.

The following trio of songs jolt the album into furious life. ‘Pyrolysis’ has one of the grandest, most cinematic intros to a dance song I have ever heard. Fatty darbuka drums are interspersed with gulps of breath that yank all the air from your lungs. ‘Drifting Rituals’ is a masterclass in call and response. Its pitched-up vocal samples weave themselves through the song, often deployed before complex percussive breakdowns to euphoric effect. Genres and rhythms continue to fizzle and fracture on ‘Blame it on SUTRA’.

We are then interrupted by the ominous ‘El 3ataba Interlude’ – a foggy blend of field recordings layered over rumbles of bass. The shift in tone is so stark that when the album kickstarts itself back into high-intensity club music with ‘Another One’, the transition feels sharp and re-energising.

Henceforth, the latter portion of the album hikes the tempo up as breaks begin to splice and multiply. There are some wonderful interplays between thudding darbuka drums and twitchy Amens on ‘Irreversible’. Its boisterous and showy, exactly as it should be. The best dance music is often the meatiest, the most muscular, and the biggest compliment I can pay the album is each song has real, tangible heft.

The title track exemplifies this. Breathy synths provide such sense of scale, whilst lovingly injected detail – tinny rattles or muffled scraps of singing – provide depth and texture. We are teased throughout with frenzied vocal fragments which finally give way to reveal the full phrase: “I think it’s time to make the floor burn”. And the floor has well and truly been set ablaze. As has the booth, the bar, the staff, and the whole damn club.

Album Image Credit: Luke Griffiths