Keeping track of new music, media and industry news.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but while the debut album from Alis received a fair amount of pre-release attention, barely anywhere seemed to bother actually reviewing it. When you listen to said record, “Hybrids in the Attic”, it becomes even harder to understand. A collection of cleverly articulated tracks ranging from the trance-inducing vocal layering of ‘Silver’ to the dubstep prowl of ‘Ox Garden’, which develops into a techno gallop halfway through, it’s a record that also contains its fair share of pop-friendly (or at least Rinse FM-friendly) moments – ‘Before You Know’ being one succulent example.

Born Sabina Plamenova in Italy to a pair of Hungarian violinists, Alis first started performing music under the name Subeena, releasing on the peerless Planet Mu, performing at the Boiler Room, putting on a night at Corsica Studios and being comped by Surgeon on his Fabric mix. All of which, alongside the fact her main residences during this time have been Berlin and London, would appear to make her perfect Resident Advisor-fodder. There are parallels with the excellent Emika too (another who dwells on the Ber-Lon axis), playing with a similar mix of dubstep and minimal techno elements and revelling in the sonic precision of both genres.

Perhaps the name-change disrupted some of the hype, or maybe “Hybrids…” got stranded in the album-release no man’s land that is the festive period. Either way, listening to a track like ‘Kalim’s Revenge’, which mixes Four Tet-style plinky techno with elements of acid house, you suspect that people won’t be sleeping for long. Who the fuck is Alis? You’ll find out soon enough…