Perfection came quickly to gyrofield. At the beginning of the decade, just 18 years old, the Hong Kong-born, Netherlands-based producer Kiana Li made their name with drum’n’bass tracks that showcased a precocious technical flair, weaving together snappy drums and strobing melodies without breaking a sweat. As the 2020s progressed, Li’s style tested new permutations: an ambient mixtape here, a breakcore riff there, a touch of acidic sleaze corroding the edges of their supple basslines. With the release of 2025’s Succession of Belief EP, gyrofield’s evolution took a sudden leap, reorienting around flushed, hypnotic beats that marched to an obdurate pulse. Amid the ensuing hubbub, Li launched their own label, Field Research, and a creed: to build “a safe space for artists to present interesting, odd, or deeply personal ideas.” With the release of their debut album, Great Jobs, they make good on that promise: It’s some of the most patient and beguiling work of the young artist’s career.
In its sweltering atmospheres and insistence on measured grooves, slow builds, and slower releases, Great Jobs feels like an attempt to reverse-engineer several different genres. Per gyrofield’s account of the album’s development, it was conceptualized as a means of interpreting dub and post-rock through their own lens, appending a thick glossary of recognizable signifiers to the artist’s sui generis musical language. Li is nothing if not eager to show their work: Consider the reverberant reggae-tinged haze of “Great Jobs (Don’t Wanna),” with soft whispers and guttural murmurs dotting a beat that just barely emerges from beneath a sea of spectral processing. This androgynous, liminal realm is the soil from which all of Great Jobs’s tracks blossom, variations on a theme that’s equal parts introspective and exploratory.
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Even at the album’s more sedate tempos, gyrofield still delivers the manic intensity that marks their best work, building luscious tension with an arsenal of top-shelf production tricks. “Ma Sacrée” spends its runtime casting a blobby synth riff through labyrinths of delay, twisting itself into matted strands of feedback that untangle at the slightest agitation. The distorted industrial beat of “Take Backs”—think “Closer” after a dozen rounds of telephone—plays host to waves of dessicated plucks before yielding to an eerie melody that refuses to resolve cleanly. Indeed, the album is punctuated not so much by distinct climaxes as it is by gentle slopes and dips, brief but memorable detours; its compositions undulate and expand like glossy slime molds.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
