SLANDER & Nejvex - Booster Ignition

The riser in the first thirty seconds of Booster Ignition keeps climbing past the point your ear expects it to tip over, and by the time it finally does you’re already braced wrong. That misdirection is the whole trick here. SLANDER spent years being the melodic, teary end of American dubstep, the duo you’d put on to feel something at a festival, and pairing with Nejvex drags them somewhere with far more teeth. The first drop is still recognisably them, big and emotional and designed for forty thousand phone lights. Then around 1:45 it resets and comes back as something closer to a demolition, the melody scrapped for a bassline that sounds like a jet engine being fed gravel. The heavy half is the better half, and I say that as someone who used to put SLANDER on specifically to feel sad in a crowd. Nejvex clearly pushed the sound design into properly nasty territory and SLANDER had the sense to let him. The mix is huge without turning to mud, every layer still legible even when three of them are screaming at once. It’s the rare collab where you can hear both acts winning instead of one swallowing the other. A half-beat of total silence right before that second drop makes you lean in without meaning to. My only complaint is that it ends right as the second drop finds its stride, a good ninety seconds before I was ready to let go.

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