Four years on from Bloei EP (ninih002) and his bewitching collaboration with Theremin soloist Carolina Eyck, Waves (yeyeh002), Eversines returns to Pieter Jansen’s yeyeh/ninih platform with his second solo album, Dwang. The intervening period has seen the Dutch producer release a string of EPs on dancefloor staples like De Lichting, Kalahari Oyster Cult and Wex, all while performing his particular brand of cross-genre dreaming music in DJ and live sets at clubs and festivals across Europe.
On Dwang, Eversines revisits the psychological themes he explored on 2021’s Solvation EP, here channelled into a compelling extended narrative centred on inner struggles and personal growth. Sequenced like a DJ set, the music on Dwang ranges between ambient, breaks, acid techno and trance in a progression that moves from a stance of denial and resistance, through acknowledgement and onwards to acceptance. This intense emotional process is skilfully evoked by Eversines’s expert control of tension, catharsis and relief across the album’s four sides.
Opening the first disc, ethereal opener ‘Bridge’ clears the mind of outside cares with ocean-deep dub. The moody yet measured breaks and acid of ‘Elev’ build a sense of anticipation before ‘Resist’ and ‘Must Know’ — both of them loopy, airtight takes on classic acid techno — each evoke the feeling of being trapped in a cycle. The second disc opens with ‘Fog’, a title done justice by the track’s billowing clouds of electrically-charged synths and murky bass. The wave of energy building up to this point begins to crest with ‘Onheil’ (‘Evil’), a driving floor-filler that could soundtrack a racing game from the future, before the surf finally breaks with the rushing Detroit-meets-psytrance barrage of ‘Problem Solving Mode’. ‘Tussen Tijd’ (‘In Between’) marks the calming of the waters with cautiously optimistic chord progressions and bright breaks.
It’s not a resolution, because in this life there are no easy answers. The trick, as Eversines tells us through this varied musical journey, is to let go of things outside your control and find peace in yielding to a higher flow. Thus Dwang, at once concise and expansive, uses the full range of Eversines’s dancefloor acumen to convey his personal message with universal resonance.