DIGIFUGA SERIES: STELLAR EP by GO DAM

Building on the foundations laid on his Braindance Records label between 2017-2020, Korean musician Go Dam now steps out on the second release on Stellar Systems. The Digifuga Series: Stellar EP catches the producer in interplanetary hyperdrive, charting a path along the cosmic trails left by pioneers from Hashim to Mad Mike to Gerard Hanson.

The four tracks were written in the studio Go Dam built with his own hands in Eulji-ro — traditionally Seoul’s printing district and now home to a panoply of small businesses — during the pandemic. The same attitude — meticulous, artisanal — is present in all of his work, be it as an assistant composer of film scores, producing K-Pop for online personalities or calibrating sound systems at locations around the city.

The EP opens with the irrepressible high-tech electro funk of ‘Fevernova’, a slapping, stepping beat underpinning growling bass and wide-eyed synth lines. ‘Dream Powder’ is a stormy banger, surfing on a wave of filtered acid frequencies and squalls of noise above a driving 4/4 pulse; midway through the track, the clouds part and the sun breaks through. ‘Chrono Flux’ keeps the energy high, a soundtrack to an anime motorbike chase at sunset, while ‘Quasiverve’ dives into deepest night, its sinuous leads creeping out of the shadows over a stalking bassline.

Blending heavyweight vintage hardware with choice digital tools, Go Dam conjures a widescreen, epic sound that speaks as much to the sci-fi optimism of early electro and techno as it does to the machine-mediated fragmentation of music — and the music economy — today.

* Words by Joe Delon