Rollin

The title does exactly what it says. There is a rolling quality to this production that is different from footwork's usual angular attack — the kicks still tumble in their characteristic asymmetric patterns, but there is a circularity to the arrangement, phrases completing themselves and returning, the overall motion suggesting a wheel rather than a sprint. The bass is prominent and generous here, giving the track a low-frequency warmth that many of Rashad's harder productions strip away in favor of mid-range percussive impact. Whatever vocal sample anchors the melodic identity of the track has been processed until it sits somewhere between instrument and voice, recognizable as human in origin but abstracted into pure texture, riding the groove rather than leading it. There is something almost hypnotic about the repetition structures Rashad builds here — footwork as a genre has always had this quality, the way the relentless 160 BPM eventually stops feeling fast and starts feeling inevitable, like breathing, like the train on a familiar route. This is the track for the middle of a long night when time has become elastic and the room has achieved whatever state it was working toward. It does not build toward a drop in the EDM sense; it simply continues being itself, which at sufficient volume and duration is its own kind of overwhelm.