

Aasthma, a collaboration between Swedish producers Pär Grindvik and Peder Mannerfelt. A sonically high-fidelity whirlwind, occupying a dazzling soundworld where Top 40 ballads and breakbeat rollers gleefully canoodle with trap bangers, neon- streaked EDM and guttural dancehall. After graduating from the class of Fever Ray’s 2018 Plunge tour, Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik found themselves inexplicably drawn towards creating Aasthma as a vessel for their collaborative respiratory malaise. When not being tapped up for gaseous exchanges for the likes of Björk, Modeselektor and Massive Attack, they’ve been individually stifling the airflow in cramped basements and cavernous technodomes for two decades, and now they’re committed to fumigating beyond the club together. A string of self-released EPs have kept the aesthetic premise of Aasthma tantalisingly open, skirting full-bodied body music and lingering ambient-not-ambient reflections on pointedly succinct 12”s. Likewise, their live appearances have left the prospective outlook for Aasthma as clear as the lungs of a 40-a-day coal miner. From club wreckers in Berghain and Concrete and an Aasthma Atonal Allstars takeover at Berlin’s leading urban industro-fest to a showcase with Penelope Trappes and Dale Cornish singing actual songs.