Eli Brown made his name dragging Bristol warehouse techno onto festival main stages without sanding the edges off it, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Most producers lose the menace somewhere on the way up. He kept his, and ‘It’s Like That’ is him pressing down on it.
The extended mix runs on acid that keeps souring the further up it climbs, with sirens cutting in like something has gone wrong at the back of the room. The kick underneath does not move. No held breath, no long build asking for patience. The vocal is one flat refusal repeated until it turns into the hook, and I laughed the first time it came back around.
It lands on Insomniac Records as the second single from ‘Panic Attack’, Eli Brown‘s debut album, following ‘Electrify’. He described the track as being about “being in the rave, that escapism and no judgment, simply getting lost in the music and having fun with your friends.” Which is what the record delivers.
I keep putting it at 1am, in a room with a low ceiling and no phones up. I usually go for records that withhold their peak, the ones that make you wait for the opening. This one withholds nothing, and the refusal to build is what makes it stick.
