Blawan

One of electronic music’s most inventive figures across the 2010s and into the present, Blawan has repeatedly reshaped his approach while sharpening his technical command. Emerging from the post-dubstep wave at the decade’s outset, the South Yorkshire-born producer Jamie Roberts issued his 2010 debut Fram on Hessle Audio before signing with R&S Records and delivering the 2011 EP Bohla, whose clanking, stepping rhythms earned support from Surgeon and the Black Dog. That same year he issued the white-label “Getting Me Down,” a dark garage rework of Brandy’s “I Wanna Be Down,” followed by What You Do with What You Have—built around a Moodymann lecture sample from the 2010 Red Bull Music Academy—and a remix of Radiohead’s “Bloom” for the TKOL RMX 1234567 compilation.

After slowing his solo releases in 2012 amid remix commissions and side projects Karenn with Pariah and Parassela with the Analogue Cops, a Boiler Room set spotlighted the grimly humorous “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” from the His He She & She EP, propelling the track beyond club circles and positioning Blawan at the forefront of the industrial-techno resurgence. In 2013 he collaborated with Surgeon as Trade for a release on his own vinyl-only Works the Long Nights imprint. Overwhelmed by touring demands, Roberts paused solo output for two years before resurfacing in 2015 on his Ternesc label with Warm Tonal Touch and Hanging Out with the Birds, both realized on a modular-synthesizer setup that altered his sonic palette.

Subsequent EPs continued to diverge: the 2016 Communicat 1022, the Bored Young Adults outing on Trilogy Tapes, and a double EP as Kilner on Avian’s roster. Nutrition, a 2017 double EP, adopted a more restrained stance and incorporated Roberts’s own vocals. His first album, Wet Will Always Dry, arrived in 2018. The following year he and Pariah launched Voam, issuing the Karenn EP Kind of Green, the album Grapefruit Regret, and the live-archival Voam Club Archive, Vol. 1, while Roberts released the solo Many Many Pings. In 2020 Karenn returned with the “Music Sounds Better with Shoe” 12-inch and Roberts issued Immulsion and Make a Goose. Soft Waahls, an abstract, IDM-leaning EP, appeared in 2021 alongside Woke Up Right Handed on XL Recordings. That year Roberts and Pariah also debuted the industrial-metal project Persher, whose album Man with the Magic Soap was released by Thrill Jockey in 2022. Blawan’s most rhythmically intricate and sonically audacious work to date, the EP Dismantled into Juice, followed on XL in 2023.