Reso Kodama EP

For more than a decade Reso has deployed some of the sharpest drum programming skills in dance music to move dancefloors and transport listeners to new worlds. A quiet force in the trenches of the electronic dance music world, Reso — the alias of Alex Melia — has been called on by a diverse array of contemporaries including Burial & Jamie Woon, for whom he has engineered, and remixes for guitar heroes Animals as Leaders, grime kingpin Wiley and dance music legends The Prodigy and Carl Cox. After a two-year break following his Ricochet LP for Hospital Records, during which he scored a new virtual reality game for PlayStation 4, Reso returns with four tracks of spirited dance music that mark the inaugural release on his RX0 label.

The EP is driven by two upfront drum & bass productions that highlight Reso’s attention to detail and flair for music with an epic scope. ‘Kodama’ is an eight-minute long excursion of relentless drums, tight edits, and roaring bass lines that jolts you to action. On the flip side ’Tiberium’ plays with a bright, uplifting lead before plunging into a rolling break and warm bass offset by soft keys and female vocals. This is drum & bass as sweeping, cinematic compositions not just dancefloor music by the numbers.

The EP also showcases other sides of Reso’s sonic world with the instrumental break of ‘Fluid Mechanics’ resetting the mood and contrasting against the rush of ‘Kodama’ with atmospheric tinges, floating keys, and soaring guitar riffs. The EP closes on another upfront note with ‘Mantis’, which swaps the frenetic breaks and tempos of drum & bass for houseleaning 4/4 rhythms and speeds while remaining just as effective.