Baauer has spent over a decade as one of electronic music’s great shapeshifters, but on his new album U, he sounds less interested in reinvention than rediscovery.Ad 0:00 Click for sound 0:00 / 0:00 In a sense, U has been a decade in the making.
Back in 2016, around the release of his album Aa, Baauer floated a plan to spell his name across his records, beginning with 2014’s ß.Now, U is the long-deferred next letter, and it finds him retracing the spark that started it all.
Out now via his longtime label LUCKYME, U marks the Grammy-nominated producer’s first full-length since 2020’s PLANET’S MAD.Executive-produced by Hudson Mohawke, the record is his most personal to date and an ode to the tracks that sparked his love of dance music as a teenager growing up in London.
It plays like a long-lost Essential Mix, moving fluidly between disco-house hooks, French touch euphoria and big-beat maximalism, all stitched together by the sampling instincts that have defined his catalog.That spirit comes through immediately.
Embracing disco in full, ‘Better’ and ‘Nothing’s Ever Real’ (with Betsy) are shots of unfiltered euphoria while ‘Calling Out For U’ channels luminous house energy, a striking turn for a producer who first broke through in the heyday of the SoundCloud trap era.Elsewhere, ‘Supersonic’ makes the album’s sampling ethos explicit, flipping a vintage Jimmy Castor Bunch vocal into a riotous track that reaches back to the UK dance records with which Baauer grew up.
Longtime fans aren’t left behind either, as ‘Gravity/Chaos Flow’ (with KUČKA) detours into a halftime, grime-tinged hybrid that reconnects with the low-end sensibilities of his earlier catalog.Rounding out the album’s close circle of collaborators are Aluna and Brazy, alongside piano from Eli Teplin and additional production from Parisi.
The album’s openness traces back to the pandemic, w...