I’m consistently surprised by the lack of attention paid to Alex Metric. Originally hailing from the fair old land of breakbeat, Metric has spent a much of the past couple of years trying to harness the power of electro-rock-breakbeat fusion, with, it must be said, a reasonable amount of success. His sound still retains the chopped up drum lines and balls to the wall energy that made breakbeat circa 2004 such an unadorned pleasure, but now finds itself twinned with synth and guitar lines sourced from the electro-rock songbook. It’s a winning combination, and one that veers well away from the bland electro-house knock offs that almost single handedly dismantled the breakbeat scene in 2006. After producing a sequence of outstanding remixes/edits across 2007 for notable tracks such as ‘Monster Hospital’ (whoa, remember that?), ‘The Devil’ (by the Rapture) and the more remixed than listened to ‘Floating’, in 2008 Mr Metric has turned his attention to solo work, with an album due out later in the year and the superb ‘In Your Machine’ EP out through the mighty Marine Parade. He is also relentlessly touring his live show, an apparent exercise in dancefloor mayhem and red keytars. Keytar you say? I’m excited too… Of course, this furious schedule is still being twinned with reams of remixes, and Alex has soon to be released offerings coming from Autokratz, Infadels, Alphabeat and Treasure Fingers. Whew.

For your sampling pleasure today I’ve included the extra new and extra large remix of the Infadels ‘Free Things’, his own melodic charger ‘Pins’ (taken from the exceptional ‘In Your Machine’ EP – available now fromBeatport), a bass and break heavy remix of Sharem Jay’s ‘Message 2 Love’ and his simple but effective reversion of ‘The Devil’.

Infadels – Free Things (Alex Metric Remix)

Alex Metric – Pins

Sharem Jay – Message 2 Love (Alex Metric Remix)

The Rapture – The Devil (Alex Metric Bootleg)

Of course, this post arrives a convenient two months after Alex most recently toured Australia, but if his star continues to rise as it should then I can only imagine he’ll be back for festival season. In the meantime, buy the EP and start saving your pennies for the album, because it is going to be massive.

-luke