Cocktail Party Effect

Charlie Baldwin, the Berlin-based South Londoner known as Cocktail Party Effect, produces an unruly hybrid of techno, garage, grime, and IDM. Debuting the alias in 2016, he released several EPs and singles before issuing his unhinged self-titled full-length in 2020. The son of British guitar legend Ray Russell, Baldwin and his older brother began playing music at an early age. He started experimenting with a sequencer when he was 16, and began making music influenced by the flourishing U.K. garage and dubstep scenes, under the name Kasket. By 2012, his music was beyond categorization, blending the complex rhythms of IDM with ambient textures, jazz instrumentation, and modified vocals. R&S sister label Apollo signed Kasket and released five EPs, from August Fades to 2015's Egal. Baldwin discontinued the Kasket project and began making music as Cocktail Party Effect, named for the ability to focus on one sound and tune out others, in 2016. Much more rhythmically focused and bass-heavy than his previous releases, Cocktail Party Effect released a cassette mini-album, Helloyellow, and several EPs on labels such as Fog Mountain and Cold Recordings. While some of the project's earlier releases were a bit more club-friendly, his rhythms became increasingly knotty and brash with EPs like Lemons and Death of an Algorithm (both from 2018). The mutated grime of Shattered Retina appeared on Pinch's Tectonic label in 2019, and the jungle-influenced Radioactive Fruit was digitally released by Osiris Music UK at the end of the year. The 2020 full-length Cocktail Party Effect, also on Tectonic, was Baldwin's heaviest, most explosive work yet. ~ Paul Simpson