I’ve been looking through the Hyperdub Discogs, and one of the newest releases is Walton’s debut album, Beyond. This was my first time hearing of him, and after discovering some of the tracks, I’m absolutely obsessed. This album takes various styles and genres and puts them through Walton’s brilliant perspective; creating distinct (and familiar) characters with wild lives of their own.

Although the end result is to me Walton’s unusually gifted talent, I draw some connections between his music and others in the underground. “Frisbee” reminds me of the Night Slugs and “Amazon” is like a cousin of Kingdom’s “Stalker Ha” living in the jungle. Could just be my ears, but I can imagine it.

It’s difficult to have cohesion in an album. I’ve listened through recent records that have great tracks, but one of my critiques is that there isn’t a unifying element to the collection of songs as an album. Amazingly, a 22 year old dude from Manchester has emerged with an effortless, unvided debut album for Hyperdub.

In an interview with Thump, Walton said the album “has quite an industrial feel to it.” It’s a perfect way to describe the similarity in Beyond. There’s an almost mechanical perfection of multiple sounds in dance music today, which is a little eerie but mostly just badass. Walton is making a strong statement as a producer with this Hyperdub release, and his age seems to show that he’s just getting started.

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– Jimi Jaxon