Alexander Skancke

Alexander Skancke crowns himself the queen bee of dance music with 'The Wasp Queen'. We are cordially invited to shake our abdomens and lose our hive minds, at a brilliant four-track house and techno EP that remains largely resistant to calcification of concept. Skancke has chanced upon a rather hostile hornet's nest here too, hailing from the unlikely nation of Norway: the title track hears what sounds like an operative conversation set to doomy piano house progressions, before a human-insect cross-pollination experiment goes south: "is she ready?... I'm always ready..." 'Typhoon Flutes' follows with pocket flutes and grim, gloaming figure-ground voices; then the record goes full weird speed garage on 'Brother'. Finally, 'New Order Of Black Metal' makes for a rare fusion of breakbeat and black metal gut-shrieking, as human diaphragms are catabolised across a well-sliced doom-hollering.