Space Candy Talks Their New Single, "Dirt/Slime"
Space Candy, a London-based electronic dance producer, strives to bridge worlds within our increasingly genreless music landscape. Their eccentric sounds transport you into a roaring arena of disparate inspirations, from pop and EDM to metal and punk. ”I like the idea of fast band stuff combined with fast electronic stuff,” they said. “A lot of fast music has the same energy even if it sounds completely different.” But their intention isn’t simply to take an element from one genre or artist and mix it with another--a dash of Aphex Twin here, a sprinkle of dubstep there--no, Space Candy imagines a space in which all these sounds became a single entity, a chaotic universe of pure sensorium. Tracing from their 2016 Forest EP to their most recent project, Slime Sounds Vol. 1, Space Candy’s music can often be dizzying, chaotic, and raucous--but also strikingly textural, tangible, and fun. “I want to take the weirdest part of my influences and make it as accessible as possible,” they said. “And vice versa. I want to take the poppiest of pop and EDM things I really like, and stretch them to become something that even the most hardcore Autechre vinyl-collecting wanker would love.”
This combination of perspectives can be heard vividly on Space Candy's new single "Dirt/Slime"--a subversive track of idiosyncratic, unpredictable pleasures. The song, like much of Space Candy's output, refuses to meet expectations. It kicks off with an alien-sounding vocal line alongside a syncopated beat with crunchy, rusty high-hats. The song builds expectation towards a conventional bass-drop (after all, "who doesn't like a sick bass-drop," the producer said), but instead transitions into an otherworldly passage of manic sounds: a glitchy, distorted vocal sample; some demented, 8-bit video game-sounding synth leads; and a muted, wobbly drum pattern. "One of the most fun things about making music to me is the sound design itself," Space Candy shared. "I like focusing on little details and sections of a track and making it very busy."
This prioritization is evident: as the song transitions into its second half, it imbues a quick reprisal of the track's opening passage with some glossy synth melodies and exploding layers of distortion and drums. The song then enters a final stage of quiet tranquility--a moment of stark pop resolution as your mind spins and wonders how you even got there. "You know in cartoons when they try to push too much stuff in a wardrobe and it's bursting at the seams and they use their comically extended arms to try to push it in? That's what I try to do with sound," they said. One might be shocked to hear that such an approach works--but it does. Space Candy's music never devolves into incoherence or deliberate alienation; it always remains sugary and warm. And this success can be largely attributed to Space Candy's attention to detail and their creative integration of familiar genre elements--a mutation of rotating parts into something quite unlike anything out there. "Context can change how you see a sound," they said.
If context can alter preconceptions, then Space Candy may be rewriting cultural narratives around certain music cultures. Their music, in its reappropriation of different aesthetics, can in some ways be defined by its active response to and evolution from various genres and styles. In conversation about PC Music and hyperpop, a music and subcultural movement of which Space Candy is undoubtedly a part, they say, "They’re very interested in 2000s nostalgia, which is, in its most aesthetic, surface sense, very clean and polished. I want to make music that’s a reaction to that, that’s rough around the edges-- about ugly stuff like dirt.” Space Candy presents a similar philosophy from the other side of the coin: "I want my music to be a reaction against things that a traditional IDM fan might like--they like how inaccessible it is, how drawn out it is," they said. "That manifested in me fusing stuff like Aphex Twin, Autehcre, and Arca's weirdest stuff with more traditional style EDM." However, a comfortable melting-pot of styles would not begin to describe Space Candy's sound. Their music is more akin to a pervasive pushing inwards and outwards-- an aesthetic friction that results in glorious sonic ooze. You won't find Space Candy anywhere near the proverbial middle: they are entirely their own lane, creating a brand of distinctly corporeal electronic music that feels like a direct link from their inner psychology to yours. "I want to make people feel happy, but in an uncontrollable, almost sinister way," they explained. "Happiness, but also raise questions like, is it ok to be this happy? Am I still sane? You're always bewildered by what's happening."
I suppose that’s what great art (like Space Candy's) so often is-- an aesthetic expression of confounding human contradictions. Rarely, however, is it this bat-shit-crazy and fun.
Dirt/Slime can be streamed now.
Written By Noah Simon
