Gamer culture, ninja-obsessed hip-hop, disaster movies, horror and robo-futurism get smelted into slicing metallic beats with grandiose string swell in the music of Canadian bass music producer and DJ Datsik, the stage name of Troy Beetles.
If a particle collider got turned into a drum machine it might sound something like Datsik’s music. The fetishization and exoticizing of martial-arts traditions is a curious aspect of this highly mechanized music, but Chinese zithers, Japanese flutes and spoken-word bits about warfare add the connotation of quiet and deadly force to this pounding music.
Datsik, who now lives in Los Angeles, just released a new EP called “Master of Shadows.” There are moments of aggressively minced rhythmic textures, approaching dub abstraction, like on “Ronin Riddim,” along with plenty of collaborations and snippets of Kung Fu movie atmospherics.
Datsik performs at Webster Theater Webster Theater, 31 Webster St., Hartford, Thursday, Feb. 1, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $30. 860-525-5553 and webstertheater.com
