Argy makes his Afterlife debut

Afterlife opened 2022 by putting a new name on the roster. Argy joins the label Tale Of Us run with ‘Tataki’, two tracks, out on 7 January. He arrives on the back of a set at Afterlife’s showcase in Tulum, playing alongside Mind Against, Stephan Bodzin, Recondite and the founders themselves.

That Tulum booking is worth sitting with for a second. Playing an Afterlife showcase and signing to Afterlife are two very different things, and doing the second on the heels of the first suggests the label had made its mind up some while before anybody announced anything. For a producer being called a style master general by people with no particular reason to flatter him, that’s a very short walk. Argy went from guest to roster inside one season.

‘Magic Order’ is the flip side and it’s the one to hear. He runs choir-like vocals backwards through a driving track and the effect is genuinely unsettling, a sound that keeps circling back on itself and never quite lands. There’s a chanting quality underneath it that pulls toward something older and more ritual than a club record usually reaches for, and he stacks oversized elements around it until you can’t tell the analogue from the digital. Nothing about ‘Magic Order’ settles anywhere.

‘Tataki’ takes the calmer road. A looped vocal that won’t let go, atmospheres built to stay mysterious, and a producer proving he can hold a room without ever raising his voice. Two tracks, two entirely different arguments about what a debut on this label ought to sound like. ‘Magic Order’ is the one that’ll keep turning up in other people’s sets.