Eric Porter, the self-taught electronic musician who records and performs mostly under the alias of Afrikan Sciences, seems concerned with the Zen-like practice of being these days.
With his new Journey into Mr. Re, Porter returns from his last release Centered, all the more grounded in a sense of rhythm in his austere compositions, focused on the unremembered peace found in minimalism. Clocking in at an hour and change, he takes just a little edge off the top, reducing the mood and tenor throughout the 13 track.
Selections “Life Projects” and “Surrogate Sketches” give the intense upbeat workouts he’s known for, but these elongated pieces drone, not smack. Sparse and cavernous is the preferred type of arrangement this time. “Whipping Spree” and “Belfast” attain ballast from their use of acoustic bass and piano right along the synths. The effect attaches gravity to the odd-time signatures Gilles Peterson and Georgia Anne Muldrow have recognized Porter for.
Since Oct 2018, Porter’s been self-releasing projects at a swift pace, via Bandcamp, rejecting cut and dry genre distinctions. So much, in fact, his music has become a genre of its own. (Under another alias, The Camel Walk, his thunderous “Keep It Up” burns through five minutes of brimstone drums and plinking piano keys that point at some mystical ephemera swirling in the root. Even when Porter is winking, heʻs not joking.)
Using a portal of West London broken beat, house, techno and whatever new ideas he cooks up, these dispatches on sound gather no dust. And all the while co-piloting the vanguard electronic label Deepblak, Founded by Aybee, aka ArmonBazile, in Oakland. Porter’s compositions play on the side of eclectic energy to Aybee’s more or less straight on deconstruction of 4/4 music. Collaborating together or cooking apart, blood brothers in frequency, they stay steadfast pushing knobs and rhythms far left. Documenting all the hues Brown represents in amplified sound. Re-inventing what the center is, as they consistently move past it.
Porters been diligently building music as part of Les Graciés and WOOD // WORK Collective this past decade as well. Collaboration or not though, the focus remains pinprick sharp. Some choose Afrofuturism as a way to describe it.
He does not.
“Back in the day, we used to call forward-thinking music ‘that next shit,'” Porter stated on Bandcamp last year. “Then somewhere along the line many of us wanted to hone in on cultural identity as it related to progressive styles. But along the way, terminology gets bogged down and becomes a catch-all for things outside the norm, and eventually clichéd to a point where the innovators may disassociate. Personally, I will always stay on that new new, or next shit—the nexus of ancient and next.”
