As a recent essay by Hubert Adjei-Kontoh states, politics within dance music have become sanitized. Press releases love to tout the utopian possibilities of the dancefloor or pontificate on how kick drums can carve out a space for resistance, but the resulting records are, more often than not, a homogenous recycling of dance music’s past. Politics often end up being just another branding exercise. 

TAR, the new project from British artist Blood of Aza and the Richmond, Virginia-based False Prpht, isn't exactly dance music, but it does dabble in everything from hard techno ("Song 1") to syrupy Memphis rap ("Song 3") to deconstructed trance ("ALAPRR RMX"). The record as a whole is a biting critique of a culture that is far too ready to celebrate itself through virtue signaling rather than make any structural changes. 

This is true both sonically and lyrically. The instrumentation here is minimal and dystopian. From blown-out kicks to synth stabs that sit somewhere between "Energy Flash" and Slayer, this music is meant to breed a sense of discomfort. There are melodies and rhythms that occasionally surface, but they soon get swallowed by swells of feedback and distortion.

The lyrics double down on these apocalyptic soundscapes. In barely discernible screams, False Prpht pulls no punches in his takedown of the winnowing distance between liberalism and the edgy allure of alt-right: "They told me it be alt-right/ EU UK scene giving 4th Reich," he puns on "Song 2." He's even more direct on "Song 1": "White boy running / Shooting up the city / Shooting up my village / Shootin' in the name of religion / Then like who the fuck did it?"

These are tunes that are not meant to settle into the background or be digested in 15-second TikTok sound bites. These are livewire indictments that announce the arrival of a distinct voice within clubland.