Barcelona’s 30drop has spent the last few years operating at techno’s harshest end, his Axis Records debut Soroban (2020) a study in machined, industrial aggression. Obsessively is his tribute to the late Genesis P-Orridge, released through his own 30D Records imprint on 30 December 2020 — a 10” dubplate limited to just 25 copies alongside a digital edition — and it arrives carrying the year’s final-week surprise: a new Speedy J remix, his first recorded remix in years.
The original Obsessively is a suitably bleak five minutes. P-Orridge’s voice — processed, pitched and half-buried beneath the noise — is the track’s ghostly centrepiece, floating over a punishing industrial groove of distorted kicks, metallic percussion and a bassline that seems to corrode rather than warm. It’s dense and claustrophobic in the way 30drop’s best work always is, the kind of record that presses in on you from all sides until the only escape is the hit.
The remix is the event, though. Jochem Paap — a producer who has spent recent years devoted to his STOOR live hardware project and largely sworn off the format — turns in seven and a half minutes of typically precise, functional techno. Where the original suffocates, the remix breathes: the noise is stripped back, the vocal granted far more room, and Paap rebuilds the piece around a rolling, hypnotic groove that belongs firmly on the floor. It’s an understated, masterful piece of work, and it’s easy to see why Marcel Dettmann, Edit Select, Ancient Methods and Adriana Lopez all flagged the record within days of its release.
A tribute could easily have curdled into reverence or noise for its own sake. Instead, Obsessively balances both impulses beautifully — a raw memorial on the A-side and a disciplined reconstruction on the flip that shows exactly why P-Orridge’s influence still matters to techno’s heaviest hitters. The dubplate scarcity will frustrate collectors, but the digital edition ensures the record reaches the audience it deserves. A fitting, and genuinely significant, end to 2020.
