Last week, Ultra Sunn released The Beast in You. While the Belgian duo’s sophomore album isn’t quite a departure from previous club hits like “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” and “Broken Monsters,” or last year’s debut full-length, US, it shows some welcome growth from the EBM outfit.
Heavily influenced by European dance music of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ultra Sunn excels at songs that bridge the old and the new. It’s no wonder that they’ve been one of the most requested artists I’ve seen while DJing. Most of their songs are around 124 or 125 BPM, which is solidly mid-tempo when you’re DJing a darkwave night, and they fit perfectly in between Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb classics and more recent bangers from Boy Harsher and Sextile. This kind of consistency makes Ultra Sunn songs ideal for club play, but it’s also what makes them less interesting for at home listening. That’s very common amongst artists who work in hyper-specific niches of dance music, but, nonetheless, I can’t help wondering what it would sound like if Ultra Sunn stepped outside of the comfort zone.
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