Aniekwe’s first appearance on the radar was through his debut 12” release Decode / Sea Mojo on Future Times, the Washington D.C. label run by Max D. Aniekwe embodies the curious, unique vibe which hovers around electronic music from the US capital, also found on his Evolution EP for another respected, non-conformist local label, 1432 R. It’s worth mentioning Max D’s influence on the city’s music scene, as it says a lot about the creative climate Aniekwe is coming from. “Max D really helped build a diverse space for artists to flourish,” Aniekwe points out. "When you talked to Max D and visited the [now closed] Future Times shop, everybody in the scene would congregate there, no matter if you were into techno, if you listened to hip-hop, if you listened to bass music, and I think shit like that impacted a lot of us and made it so lines started to get blurred – things got more diverse.”

On ‘Decode’ and ‘Sea Mojo’ Aniekwe showed he had the instinct to make inventive updates on classically-informed techno and electro that sounded like the real deal. Authenticity in dance music is a hard idea to pin down – given the established formulae of these genres, it’s the subtle qualities which separate forgettable copycat producers from those who can make a 4/4 club track truly sing. The individual elements of ‘Decode’ are familiar - boxy drum machine hits, square wave bass, chopped up vocals, a splash of filtered acid - but Aniekwe made them jump with vitality. “I used some saturation and Glue compression on ‘Decode’ for sure,” Aniekwe recalls, thinking back to how he achieved his standout results in the well-mined field of 90s-styled US techno. “I remember listening to a track called ‘Chic’ – I forgot who made it – and they had this really quirky hat pattern, but what I noticed was that the high frequencies on the hats weren't very pronounced. On certain songs with the same style as ‘Decode’, the hats and the claps are all popping in your ear. I wanted that to be subdued a little bit and let all the other synths and atmospheric elements do the talking.” “The bass is very special,” he adds. “I wanted to do something really simple, since the synth and the drum patterns were hitting, I just got that square wave synth and laid down a simple pattern, which helped carry the momentum of the track.”

If there is a classic, US feel to ‘Decode’ and ‘Sea Mojo’, other inputs from further afield started to have an impact on the sounds Aniekwe was reaching towards in his music. At school he was already a curious listener from hip-hop to grunge and punk, seeking out anything sincere and different from the Top 40 mainstream. Time spent in the Future Times orbit deepened his sense of open-mindedness, but he’s quick to credit the L.E.N.G. parties and D.C. DJs such as Djoser for helping deepen his knowledge of dubstep and post-dubstep sounds coming from the UK. These broadening horizons fed into the music Aniekwe was making, which can be tangibly heard on the Evolution EP.

“I look up to people like Objekt or Batu because I always wondered, ‘how did they make this weird synth go on for six minutes and I’m not tired of it?’” he explains. “Something I really take pride in is my arrangement. I'm not going to talk down on other producers, but I feel like arrangement is getting lost, like there's this push to make really simple tracks. It really is a test of will to make a track and have each section be different.” Even the more linear layout of ‘Evolution’ and ‘Ruminating on Blue’ demonstrated Aniekwe’s growing confidence with arrangement, moving through progressive salvos of vibrant synth hooks or chipping away at vivid soundscapes writhing around insistent chords, but it was ‘Action’ and ‘Haji’ which signalled a move into more experimental, dramatic territory. Moments of suspended animation, false drops and unexpected dovetails all fed into the brilliantly original, ear-catching B-side of the EP. ‘Hajj’ in particular signalled a shift in sound palette as he explored percussion and rhythms from the Middle East. “I was listening to a lot of Arabic music at the time I made ‘Hajj’ and I liked the meaning of the name, going on a journey to Mecca,” Aniekwe explains. “The drums are definitely inspired by Arabic music, and I spent months piecing that track together. I was happy with what I did with the sample of the guy yelling. There are some samples you get, and the sample itself is good, but when you try to add it with a track you're working on it just dominates the entire mix. I was thinking, ‘how can I get this guy yelling within all this chaos?’ So I put it inside of a sampler and just tapped the guy in – just kept it really simple, man. Then I built some stuff around it like the flute part, so it didn't feel like that guy was in a vacuum. It's like a puzzle, that one.” “In Nigeria they have this music called Ogene and it's really tribal,” Aniekwe adds. “These guys make really complex rhythms with literally a stick and a piece of metal. I think there's an MIT lecture showing how the beating they were doing had complex mathematical characteristics to it. I think that part of my culture definitely also influenced ‘Hajj’, where you may not have much to work with, but you can make something really complex and rhythmic at the same time. That's what I really admire about artists on the Timedance label or on Hessle Audio, where they have these things that sound complex, but it's rhythmic at the same time. That's the balance I'm trying to strike right now.”

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