Osheyack and Nahash descend upon Shanghai’s ALL Club in ‘The Heel’
“It should reek of sex, drugs and anxiety.”
Club Apathy sees SVBKVLT producers Osheyack and Nahash joining forces for the first time for four brutal dispatches from Shanghai’s unparalleled club scene. “The EP is simply meant to be a hedonistic club record,” levels Osheyack, “it should reek of sex, drugs, and anxiety.” Each track on the release sees both producers embarking on a no-holds-barred spiral of depravity, from the frenetic, militaristic percussion of the title track to the sadomasochistic intensity of ‘Pegged’ and the deranged vocal chops of ‘Less Than A Pound Of Flesh’, this is the soundtrack to the most deranged party you’ve ever been to.
This is where we find ourselves with the pummelling, pitch-black techno of ‘The Heel’, what producer Nahash calls “straight up club music for a post-Covid world when we can finally sweat together.” Rather than trying to find a middle ground between each of their sounds, the producers opted for something altogether more focused, “a common ground rooted in snappy drums programmed on hardware samplers and rich and buttery Moog subs.” These are tried and tested weapons in both producers’ arsenals, as Osheyack explains, “I’ve played versions of these songs live for the past few years testing out what works at ALL”. Run by SVBKVLT label head Gaz Williams, ALL Club is the base of operations for many of the artists on the label, as well as the setting for ‘The Heel’s grotesque visual treatment.
Artist and designer Kim Laughton transforms ALL into a debauched pocket dimension, assaulting us with a relentless barrage of club detritus, discarded junk food, demonic club kids and an unfortunate Roomba that is very much out of its’ depth. Zooming in on the more surreal aspects of club excess, Laughton envisions the world of ‘The Heel’ as dark, messy and nightmarish, the hellish embodiment of over a year of lockdown-induced frustration. Just as Osheyack and Nahash seek to make tracks that smell of sweat and other bodily fluids, so too does the director revel in the filthiest aspects of clubbing, transporting us to a parallel universe where the only decisions are bad ones, but at least we get to make them.
‘The Heel’ is taken from Club Apathy, which arrives via SVBKVLT on April 2, featuring remixes from DJ Marcelle and Nkisi. For more information about SVBKVLT you can visit the label’s Bandcamp and follow the label on Instagram.
