The opening move of 'BAGS INC' makes it clear that tempo here is not a staircase but a coiled spring: '80 DREAD' starts at 106 BPM over a deceptively placid C major, and 'RESISTANCE RETREAT' leaps straight to 150 with no stops in between. Addison Groove and Sam Binga — partners since the 2013 'BS3' EP on Modeselektor's 50 Weapons — don't lay the record out as the classic warm-up-to-peak-time ramp, but as a series of surges and retreats.
The core lives between 140 and 151: nine of the twelve cuts sit there, six of them locked between 148 and 151 with 'M_Y_A' at the ceiling. It's the Midwestern juke and jit territory the Bristol duo filters through a UK lens — material that, as Resident Advisor reported, was born in a 72-hour session at Devon Analogue Studios, surrounded by vintage drum machines and synthesisers. Two valleys organise the listen:
- 'KILLA FUNK', at 68 BPM and, at 5:31, the album's longest cut, works on halftime logic: doubled it reads 136, right next to 'E-QUESTION' at 134, so the drop is more perception than arithmetic.
- '80 DREAD' and 'E-QUESTION' (106 and 134) are the only real stops outside the fast block, both in the first third; from 'M_Y_A' onwards there is no rest.
The home stretch moves in sawtooth: the 143 electro of 'FROM THE BACK', the fleeting 'SACUDE' with Sirius Soundz (150 and barely 2:59), a breather at 140 on 'REDPOINT', the breakbeat of 'TYP SHT' back at 143, and the 150 close of 'FKN SRS', which also resolves into A-flat major after nine straight cuts in minor keys. For a pair that already staked this name on a 2018 EP for Dance Trax, the album feels like the definitive blueprint: not a journey from less to more, but a map of pulses folding back on itself.
Sources: RA · Dubiks