It’s been quite some time since we last heard from Costa Rican producer Giancarlo Renzi (aka Raido). He dropped Jera, his last full-length, at the dawn of 2015. Last year seemed more promising after the release of a loosie called “Blow,” but Renzi stayed out of the spotlight in the following months. This is no coincidence, since he was in the process of relocating from Mexico City back to his home country. He also experienced a producer’s worst nightmare: he got his laptop stolen, and with it, his music-making tools and part of the LP he was working on at the time.
Raido eventually returned to all of that unfinished music with the intention of showing it to the world, but in a different format. That’s how Automatic/Manual, a new, six-EP series he plans to release over the course of the year, was born. The first installment, Automatic EP1, is set to drop on January 30. He has shared the track “Dreams in Black” to give us a little preview of the direction he’s taken.
While Jera stood out for its weightless optimism and “Blow” for its cinematic sense of adventure, “Dreams in Black” is just as blue as Raido’s Twitter persona. It does share the genre-hopping quality of those two releases, flirting with hip-hop, house and trap. But the pillowy synths accent shadowy chords, and a blanket of white noise and bitcrushed pads lay on rhythms that pinch your muscles.
Automatic EP1 is out January 30. Stay tuned for upcoming releases by Raido’s own Top Cats imprint.