Contact, Want, Love, Have

After a string of 12s on Hyperdub over the last couple of years starting with the now classic ‘Please’ in 2008, ‘Contact, Want, Love, Have’ is the debut album from Sara Abdel-Hamid a.k.a Ikonika. ʻContact, Want, Love, Haveʼ doesnʼt mess around or waste a note as she colours in and then discards the rulebook. Maybe itʼs her background as a drummer in a post hardcore band, her love of r ‘n’ b and hip hop that bring in that extra that makes her music stand out from the legions. Or maybe its just her ear for an odd melody.

While on the face of it the album seems to traverse a number of retrofuturist styles, including dubstep, uk funky and garage, 80s synth pop and computer game soundtracks, it re- mains totally contemporary, coherent and focused, making the idea of restraining her to a single genre irrelevant. In its sometimes brash tone clashes, Ikonika has produced something that feels emotionally powerful and brave. Never obvious, and bordering on the maniacally deranged at times, her hyperactive, tough and sparse drums and bright, citric synthesizers splash new shapes and fizzes of emotion all over the place. From the first woozy breeze of the accordian-like synths of opening track ‘Ikonoklast’, on to the deliriously twisted stomp of ‘Idiot’, the synthetic beauty of ‘Yoshimitsu’, ‘Fish’ and ‘Heston’, the computer love of ‘We are all Winning the War’, the mutant g-funk half-step of ‘Sahara Michael’ through to the atonal soca-tronics of ‘Look’ and the space funky of ‘Psoriasis’ and ‘Video Delays’, if you listen carefully youʼll hear one of 2010’s most original producers at work.