Balam Acab

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• Balam Acab

  Balam Acab – aka Alec Koone – is an enigmatic young US producer placed in the witch house genre alongside artists like oOoOO, Holy Other and XXYYXX. He makes lush, layered dreamscapes of snyth-washed electronic music, often with the kind of distorted vocal samples that Burial brought to post-dubstep. Like Burial, his downtempo beats are glitchy and inventive. Unlike Burial, Balam Acab performs live. And man is he cool. I saw him when he came to London, performing in an East London basement club called Birthdays, with a simple AV screen, a laptop and a bunch of other equipment. He basically performed in complete darkness, other than the light offered by the eerie visuals behind him, and he was mesmerising.

  Cuts from his album Wander/Wonder, such as ‘Apart’ and personal favourite, the beautiful ‘Oh, Why’, were performed with pin-point precision, alongside older tracks from his See Bird EP, such as ‘See Birds (Moon)’ and ‘See Birds (Sun’), which open and close the EP respectively. This was a much more subtle and atmospheric performance than, say, a contemporary like XXYYXX, with the raviest moments coming when pulsating moments of bass dropped.

  It seems like witch house is going out of fashion, with artists like The Weeknd taking this modern take on RnB to the mainstream, but the next time Balam Acab is in town I assure you I will be there.

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  by cliverozario