Rashad Becker is an experimental producer/musician from Berlin. His music typically involves extremely unique, flowing synthesisers that have a constant fluctuating feeling to them. Whether they be drifting in and out of pitch, volume, panning or rhythm, they are constantly moving. The way each of these sounds, which are entirely on their own path, interact with each other is where the magic of his music lays. The momentary cohesion of each element can completely reshape the context of the elements on their own.
Rashad Becker’s music feels like a world and an atmosphere as opposed to a song. His work feels like a fluid and dynamic expression of emotion, not a defined and rigid song structure.
Rashad Becker relies heavily on modular synthesis to get his wacky, mesmerising sounds. Part of his fluid, dynamic feel comes from his use of LFO’s and everything feels like it is constantly modulating and growing because of it. Becker does not stick to a singular key in most of his work, either. Looking at the track ‘Themes VI’, we can hear synths constantly sliding up and down in pitch. The individual notes of this song are less important than the journey it takes us on. The way that Rashad Becker expresses emotion through music goes against all that is typically taught to musicians. He doesn’t express anxiety through the use of dissonant intervals over an upbeat 4/4 drum pattern, he expresses it by making each sound feel like it has its own personality that exists outside of the confines of music theory and what you are ‘supposed’ to do.
Rashad Becker’s music is raw expression, and the emotions felt while listening to him are ones I have never felt from listening to music before. The constant fluctuation and incredible sound design lends itself to a rich and detailed world that takes you on a journey between all sorts of emotions, though a crippling sense of dread and anxiety can often be felt running underneath it all.