DJ Narciso has worked tirelessly to carve out his own style of batida. While friend and fellow RS Produções member Nuno Beats was dropping a perky “Jet2 Holiday” remix, Narciso was working on a droning edit of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.” This year, the 20-something producer issued two solo releases for one of Lisbon’s most celebrated underground labels, Príncipe. Diferenciado, the stronger of the two, trudged to the beat of tarraxo—a slowed-down version of kuduro designed for a couple’s dance. At 90-100 BPM, tarraxo brings more swagger to the much quicker batida framework that’s au courant among the scene’s younger producers.
On Dentro De Mim, his debut solo release for the Shanghai-born label SVBKVLT, Narciso sometimes follows the crowd, and it’s harder to enjoy his haunting, industrial style. In his best moments, he either goes slower or leaves enough space for his gothic sound design to flourish. The last kick drum in each bar of “Segredo” quakes as though the floorboards are about to cave in, and the swooshes of percussion on “Terrugem” fizz like parries from a cutlass. A nightmarish tone lingers over these tarraxo tracks as Narciso turns them into an unwieldy waltz, best danced aboard a ghostly pirate ship. SVBKVLT, with its reputation for gothic, cavernous, 21st-century club music, is the perfect home for such otherworldly material.
Some of his choices here can feel like missed opportunities. In “Pressão,” the groove sits stiffly atop pumping 130 BPM kick drums—instead of tarraxo’s stalking plod—but the track never evolves beyond its caterwauling synths. Swimful’s grime remix of the same track plays with space and tension better, weaving in a zigzagging harmonica synth and waiting until the end to layer and bend Narciso’s screeching sirens into a strobic web. Narciso steps up for the faster-paced, techno-leaning tunes like “Agancha” where something uncanny lurks around every corner, be it a synth that howls like a werewolf or a coarse stirring like beating batter.
“Pesadelos” doesn’t build quite as patiently as “Agancha,” but its robotic churn touches on another side of Narciso’s artistry that resonates with a nascent subgenre of techno called mecha, which is currently being explored by U.S. producers like Zvrra, twofold, and Nondi_. Such a niche style could only spawn from young artists binging ’90s anime, neo-noir comics, and indie video games in the outer reaches of the internet. Similarly, Narciso is a Lone Ranger of the batida scene. Dentro De Mim has all the ingredients of his singular and hermetic style, but it doesn’t always home in on the most effective way to blend them. As opposed to his next big leap, Dentro De Mim feels like a welcome, yet hesitant, step down familiar paths.