DJ Nigga Fox pushes Príncipe to new conceptual limits with the remarkable 15 Barras - a four-part movement of virulent acid, screeing strings and crowd noise unfolding over a seamless 20 minute arrangement. It’s just mad on so many levels, right up there with the Afro-cubist abstractions of Jamal Moss and Nolan Reusse at their best.
Originally conceived as the soundtrack to an installation but ultimately arriving on this one-sided piece of wax, 15 Barras trades in Nigga Fox’s usual dancefloor intensity and immediacy for something more slow burning and experimental in structure and duration.
An elasticated 303, or 303 emulation, is the glue that holds the piece together, coming in sticky waves of jabbing, writhing rhythm, accreting diced chants and swells of clamouring crowd noise that eventually hinge around a splintered claps and trills of hollow, wooden blocks of percussion at ruggedest angles.
Drop this at the right point in the dance and you’ve got at least enough time for a really leisurely slash, and maybe even roll a zoot before returning to the dance and finding everyone melted in some kind of Cronenbergian amorphorgy.