Savant
Overworld

Savant is God.

Aleksander Vinter is a 25-year-old Norwegian, and once played in a Black Metal band. As for the rest of his personality, we can only guess at the intense love he has for Nintendo video games (look at the huge avatar of himself in Wario attire strolling satisfied, spreading panic in a pink world).

Savant's music is catchy but complex. It's danceable because this DJ is a pioneer of Dubstep. Or better, "from" Dubstep, since the genre is now a bit old (early '00s) for current standards, and through the Norwegian's touch, it emerges magically transformed.

The influences, as well as the actual genres he expresses himself with, are numerous. Wikipedia says: Dubstep, Electro House, Complextro, Chiptune, Fidget House, Glitch-Hop, Trap, Moombahton, and Moombahcore.

The most useful label in this case, in my view, is Complextro, a term coined by another legendary figure in the scene, Porter Robinson (born in 1992, get it? nineteen ninety-two), which fully describes the Savant-sound. Tempo changes, syncopations, scratch loops, and all possible sounds everywhere, building intricately rhythmic patterns that remain entirely catchy and danceable.

For those not familiar with the aforementioned genres, beware: it is electronic music to dance to, more or less yes, but it has nothing to do with commercial dance or house music tunz tunz. It is something extremely powerful, heavy, monolithic, meant to be pumped through gigantic speakers. 

And it's MELODIC. And not melodic in the David Guetta way, let's be clear, this individual is literally at the head of an immense orchestra of frequencies and sound timbres, where human voices rarely intrude, painting 8-bit landscapes and beyond in our ears.

I don't want to describe all the tracks, which are 17 in total (with an average duration of 4 minutes, except for the 9-minute case of Firecloud) and all of very high quality, because even in a single track the same passage is rarely repeated, and we will never hear the same overall sound twice.

If you don't want to listen to the entire album, I recommend the title track (quite a summary of the Savant-sound), Quantum Mechanics (very industrial in atmosphere), FlashBach (one of the album's "prog" shifts, which opens with the sound of a harpsichord and changes tempo at least 3 times).

This album is from 2012, as are the two that precede it and the two that follow. Five entire albums in a year, with an average of 16 tracks each, each still at the top of the genre to which it belongs. Like: do you want to hear quality Moombathon or Electro, personal, innovative? Pick from Savant, even if it's not his genre. This fact, and more generally Vinter's attitude, make him a unique and anomalous creature in a landscape made up of DJs who are born and die with a single, or achieve untouchable status with 4-5 good tracks, and that's why I say he's God.

Without acoustic music, then electric, and decades of pop culture behind, electronic music would never have been, that's clear.

Imagine a single artist whose musical culture had the chance to be born with one and grow with the other, and evolve into a modern, technological sound, but with universal influences. I believe this artist is Savant, and his secret is hidden in his entire discography. Enjoy!