When talking about acid, thoughts tend to go straight for the classic stuff, that slippery 303 squelch dance floors can't get enough of. But what has kept the genre vibrant and interesting for so long is its versatility—some of the freshest material leans towards grubby, melancholic or just flat-out bizarre sounds. Robert Crash, a new alias for Francesco Schito of defunct Italian trio I.F.M., taps directly into that dark, oddball vein on his debut EP for Créme Organization. He uses the 303's gnarled synth tones and lopsided bass sequences for electro-tinged techno. Acid's squirrelly essence courses through every part of Ultimate Traxxx, even as Schito downplays its most recognizable qualities.
From the heavy bob of "Gigolo" to the gurgling "Fabric," these four productions are, to their benefit, drugged-out and sloppy. The way "Alziemer" creeps along in a bog of detuned bass gives its unhinged, atonal pads some added disquiet. "Gigolo" is a sort of machine funk that's been trampled on and turned inside out—Schito mixed this thing so drastically that it could be mistaken as an early Actress track, or at least Funkineven. All eyes should be on "Co. Art 187," though, as it's here that every aspect ofUltimate Traxxx feeds into a monstrous steamroller of a tune. It's five and a half minutes of a big, dumb techno beat fitted with little more than hard-smacking claps and cartoonish synth squiggles, and it slays. Like the rest of the EP, "Co. Art 187" can make something so formidable out of a single idea because there's far more at work than its rugged simplicity let's on.