my friend dario: physical dub
Francisco Espregueira
We always love when artists expand to other genres and moods. Following Senza Estate (Hell Yeah Recordings, 2024), and while preparing a new album, My Friend Dario returns with Physical Dub again via Hell Yeah Recordings. The Catania-based artist is known for an unpredictable approach, rewiring acid, nu-disco, breakbeat, and electro into fresh shapes. Here the music heads straight into the shadows.
“Check Up” sinks into a slow psychedelic groove, while “Ossa” moves with the patience of deep techno. On “Blood Flow”, echoed percussion and jazz fragments hang in the air, giving the track a sense of depth without crowding the mix. The record keeps descending. “Subcutaneous” pairs drifting synths with voices that appear and disappear, while “Joints” locks into a dub rhythm with bass doing most of the heavy lifting. “Follow Up” changes the pace completely, floating into ambient territory and leaving the dancefloor somewhere far below. It makes sense as a side step from the album Dario has been preparing, and also as another example of his willingness to pull his music apart and rebuild it. Physical Dub is less about sunny moments, but about what happens between them: echoes, gaps, low frequencies and rhythms that keep pulling you deeper. Available on vinyl.
My Friend Dario has been hooked up to his machines crafting a new album, but in the meantime, he drops six melon-twisting dub cuts for freaky late back rooms.
The new album comes two years after the summer essential, Senza Estate, and explores a new Mediterranean sound. The ever-unpredictable Italian continually rewires acid, nu-disco, breakbeat and electro and has been busy playing gigs all around Sicily, including with acts like Melbourne duo OK EG at Opera Festival.
'Check Up' is a slow, dark descent into a damp underground cavern with psychedelic swirls, 'Ossa' is slow, lurching deep techno for fans of Donato Dozzy and 'Blood Flow' is a cavernous post-dubstep world with echoing hits and dark jazz motifs that linger like smoke trails. 'Subcutaneous' is all spectral synths and paranoid voices that drift in and out of your consciousness and 'Joints' rides on a dub riddim with flickering vocal fragments and inky bass. 'Follow Up' is a submerged ambient drift that suspends you amongst alien lifeforms.
A wonderfully strange and spacious series of dub hallucinations.