On his debut album, 2016’s Shred, Skee Mask proved himself a master manipulator of volume—not just as a measure of loudness, but also three-dimensional space. Wrapping billowing pads around the chunkiest breakbeats, the Munich producer fashioned a strain of techno that seemed to expand in all dimensions at once. Played soft, it could almost pass as ambient music, yet heard loud, it proved to be the most thunderous sort of big-room club music imaginable.
“50 Euro to Break Boost,” from Skee Mask’s forthcoming album Compro, is cut from similar cloth. The rattling breakbeat rhythm encompasses an unusually wide range of frequencies, from seismic lows to apple-crisp highs, and the track’s central riff is a series of descending notes with a burnished gleam that suggests church bells. It doesn’t really do much during its five-minute run; the breakbeat loops ad infinitum, and the reverb around the notes seems to stretch from horizon to horizon. It’s less a song than a broad, inviting body that practically begs you to leap into it—like a trampoline, or a lake.
