Rashad Becker

Rashad Becker makes a living with his ears. As engineer at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, he’s mastered and cut a massive amount of dance, electronic, and experimental albums (hiscredits include at least 1200 records). He’s built a reputation for creating great-sounding vinyl, so it’s no shock that the first record of his own music sounds great, too. Traditional Music of Notional Species, Vol. 1 is thoroughly clear and precise. Everything on it is boldly legible, and though there are tons of sounds intersecting and overlapping, nothing is blurry.

Often music like Becker’s can seem dislocated from the material world, cut off from any physical events that might have created the sounds. But Becker’s mix lives and breathes in pointed, often hilarious detail. His sounds actually sound like things, be it growling animals, buzzing flies, distant echoes, whirring sirens, or blipping radars.