On this charity compilation, the Swedish label best known as the home of rappers like Yung Lean and Bladee dives deeper into electronic music and the golden-hour euphoria of trance.
Swedish label YEAR0001 originally made a name for itself with rap-adjacent acts like Sad Boys and Drain Gang, but as its presence has expanded, the experimental Swedish music hub has increasingly bent toward electronic music. The RIFT One compilation—the first in a series benefiting community bail funds, mutual aid groups, and racial-justice organizing—features contributions from the rappers who have become its brand names: Bladee, Thaiboy Digital, and Yung Lean (appearing under a pseudonym closer to his government name, jonatan leandoer96). But overall, RIFT One is more interested in the intricate loops and extended grooves of dance music—specifically, the rave culture of the turn of the millennium—than in hip-hop.
The compilation showcases a broad spectrum of overlapping and interconnected styles. The so-called “trance revival”—spearheaded by artists like Lorenzo Senni and Ejeca’s Trance Wax remix project—is in full effect on RIFT One, which features a few tracks that Diddy could conceivably get down to at Ibiza. Dutch producer Torus builds a glittering entrance to the YEAR0001 universe out of stuttering synths and haunted shards of human voice on opening cut “Circles,” while Chariot gets the first anthemic beat drops in with “Sky Wheel,” effortlessly channeling the work of ATB or Ferry Corsten. PC Music-affiliated songwriter Namasenda imagines a nihilistic rave fantasy on “I Could Die,” her pitch-shifted, effervescent voice floating above glistening loops and thunderous beats.
Despite the label’s collective interest in bygone subgenres, RIFT One is fairly forward-thinking, weaving Auto-Tuned vocals, ambient textures, and rap flows into the sounds of dance-pop’s past. Beijing-based MC Bloodz Boi contributes a lowkey trap ballad with “Mist,” flowing gently over aching strings and the sampled sound of breaking glass. The compilation also highlights a number of UK-based producers, including Palmistry, whose “Basho Dew” is a hissing little piece of haunted speed garage, and Mssingno, who collaborates with HXE on “MXE,” a gritty club track with shades of South Africa’s gqom sound. XL-signed Dark0 works with composer Graeme Norgate—the hand behind the iconic electronic scores for games like Donkey Kong Land, GoldenEye 007, and the TimeSplitters franchise—on “Scrapyard 1v2,” which recalls video games not just in its level-like title but its raging hardcore sound, the kind of thing to which you could conceivably play Doom 64.
Much of the music released by YEAR0001 has the feeling of a video game soundtrack, borrowing tropes and textures from various subgenres of electronic music and reconfiguring them. Quiltland’s “Still” has a gently repetitive, bubbling quality, a piece of music that could accompany your explorations of a computer-generated world just as easily as it could dictate the movements of your body in the club. In the same way that the work of Yung Lean or Bladee introduces recognizable elements of American rap music to a new environment, the RIFT One compilation is less rave revivalism than rave re-imagination. This is a blast from another dimension in which the mix never ended, fusing the musical optimism of another age with a colder spirit of experimentalism.
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