RAIME – Am I Using Content Or Is Content Using Me?

Since the dread dub exploration of their 2016 sophomore album, Raime have been steadily shifting their sound in every EP. First offering Notion 2 Notion gave insight into more club-oriented attacks in the same sonic universe of previous album Tooth. The tunnel these two tracks dugs, the bass, sparse drums and compressed feeling of dread and loss moved slightly faster than the previous year. Despite this, they didn´t stray too far, blended nicely into the known universe Raime build. 

A bigger venture indicative of what would happen with their main project came under the Yally moniker and their Dread Risk / U-Eff-O 7-inch for Diagonal. Here the duo sped up the comatose drums and bass into frantic hammering, incorporated vocal snippets and delivered a direct connection into the jungle and footwork roots of the abstract main project. What came to the fore in this release was a clear understanding of sonic storytelling. While Raime and Tooth certainly don´t lack in this register, the music moved in atmospheric and visceral ways, almost neglecting any lifeline of linear telling for sonic showing, the instruments, the sparse beats and the repetition bringing home the feeling, pointing fingers without uttering a word.

Now Raime emerge and from the cellars, the studio, underground raves, and piles of vinyl to dig through, the EP, with Am I Using Content sees the duo unapologetically going full internet. Keeping the feeling of dread and knack for driving bass lines and eerie sounds intact, opener "Some Things Can Happen Just Like This" subdues these elements in favor of the digital clarity of a reggaeton beat. Apart from smaller incursions by vocals, silences, and synths, Raime seem to be mimicking sonic elements by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never, bridging the pastel vibe of Lopatin with their unique understanding for stutters, icy synths and working to keep a crowd moving. Breaking with this new found straightforwardness towards the latter half of the first track "Our Valleys Are Uncanny" is the more subtle throwback to the previous material while allowing more colors into the bleakness and the production to sound fuller to some extent. It is the full embrace of synthetic elements, the blatant showcase of metallic drums admits the processed vocals, samples, and stutters that alters the previous infatuation with hallowed out drums, sprinkly guitar and a depressing amount of negative space. 

"The Nourishment Cycle" follows this up by stepping up the pace, letting the screams and blemishes act as triggers in the assault that leaps from internet source code into straight up tribal ecstasies. Closing track "Real People Not Actors" is the highlight in these set of songs. The metronomic jungle vibes, the menacing huffing, the eerie synths act together in the occasional silences of video samples. The voices and sound effects become song like in the altering beats, steadily accelerating in the simulacrum before disappearing into what pretty much sounds like a sample ripped from R Plus Seven.

Overall Am I Using Content Or Is Content Using Me? poses the same questions much of the work of Daniel Lopatin and other internet/vaporwave obsessed electronic outfits tackle. It is the collapse of meaning facing off with the undeterminable deluge the user of the internet and its wide array of content faces. Raime are no longer sitting in front of their gear alone but dive into sound from their laptop, letting the sights and sounds and the unstoppable and nonlinear wave of information crash into their music and signature dread dub.