Power EP

If the underground has a defining sound this summer, it’s the hardgroove revival rolling out of Paris, and TRYM is one of the names carrying it furthest. Through 2021 the French capital’s circuit of warehouses, late-night clubs and techno collectives has been powered by exactly the style TRYM deals in—90s-rave-inflected, trance-tinged loops with a swing that hits like a machine running slightly ahead of itself—and his tracks have been turning up in DJ sets with increasing regularity all year.

Power EP is the third release on TRYM’s own COLOR imprint, and its first single-sided 45rpm 12-inch: three mixes of a single track, given a clean, weighty mixdown by Mathis Kolkoz. As a statement of intent for a new label it’s remarkably focused—no filler, no variety for its own sake, just one idea examined from three angles.

The first of the three, Power - Original Mix, establishes the groove in its opening bars: a swung hardgroove rhythm, a trance arpeggio cycling over a fat, rolling bassline, and a rave-stab hook that lands directly in the sternum. Across its six minutes TRYM lets the elements breathe, adding layers of percussion and reverb-soaked textures without ever letting the momentum sag. The Power - Piano Mix stretches the same material out to seven and a half minutes, swapping the stabs for warm, slightly detuned keys and letting the pads open the track into something approaching euphoria—the closest the EP comes to a hands-in-the-air moment. The Power - Radio Mix trims everything back to three minutes of pure function: the hook, the drop, the pay-off, nothing else.

It’s a confident, tightly-constructed record from a producer at the centre of a scene that suddenly can’t stop talking about him. Power EP doesn’t reinvent hardgroove; it simply executes it with a clarity and drive that makes the whole thing sound effortless. As the launchpad for COLOR it’s a strong statement, and as a calling card for TRYM it’s a convincing one.