Deru drops rhythm tapes like a glitch in the matrix: bass hits, beats splinter, rhythms scatter. Each track—Seeds, Blackstone, Type II—is a little machine gone rogue, shuffling and stuttering, refusing to stay on any grid you know. There’s a sense of kinetic urgency throughout, like the tracks are moving faster than you can process, yet somehow you’re pulled in, forced to follow every twist, every hiccup in the pulse.
Melodies peek through like ghosts, twisted through tape delays, mangled, looped, chopped—barely recognizable, but they haunt the tracks, embedded in the chaos. Denon feels like a swarm buzzing around your skull, Mspmpc like a heartbeat skipping wires, and Mid/West jars and shocks like a punch to the jawbone. The percussion and FX are not just rhythm—they’re narrative, fragments telling stories in splintered syntax, demanding full attention to decipher.
This is not background music. It’s confrontational, immersive, and relentless. Every skittering beat, every chopped-up sample, every warped texture forces reflection; you’re coaxed into listening closely, drawn into the labyrinth Deru has built. The album breathes in its jagged spaces and exhaled chaos, leaving you dizzy, intrigued, and oddly exhilarated.
Rhythm Tapes is guerrilla music in its purest sense—raw, unpolished, and alive. There are no safe zones, no comfortable corners. It hits, it fractures, it teases, it drags you through the rubble of conventional rhythm, leaving you in awe of the madness that somehow makes perfect sense within its own fractured logic.
rhythm tapes by Deru was released 19 September 2025 and is available on Bandcamp
