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 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.
