Cressida has carved a space in the hollows between UK bass culture and Berlin’s techno heritage, skilfully siphoning the finer side of breakbeat, garage, grime without ever falling into lanes of predictability. This sonic identity he’s built has firmly levelled up with »Can You Sleep Like This« - his most personal record to date.
»Semtex« is a technoid hybrid landing somewhere between UK drill and smoked out basement club gear - future-shock junglist tension gliding over tectonic sub plates. »Same Dance« taps into Cressida’s London roots, with distant echoes harking back to the darker side of Burial and a bassline conjuring up DMZ at their most direct. »Veranda« could be the most poignant Cressida in his discography so far, built around neatly carved mellow-fx chords and a swung broken beat, without losing the formidable punch he’s made a name for.
»Can You Sleep Like This« locks into the kind of deeper & dynamic UK funky Roska first emerged with, swimming in vaporous vocal and jazzy chord flickers, before it swerves into early 90s warehouse breakbeat nostalgia. »Purple Hayes« rounds out the record on a fittingly skyward note, with filtered post-rave pads and a tightly clipped 2 step beat.
This is Cressida not just paying an ode to UK electronic music lineage, but cementing a place within it.
