Chewlie - Seeking Pattern

Maloca Records further sharpens its position as the pre-eminent location for boundary-testing club mutations with Seeking Pattern, the latest EP from Bern-based producer Chewlie. Drawing equally from DnB’s abrasive pressure and techno’s negative space, the release unfolds as a study in instability and drift – rhythm treated not as a fixed grid, but a mutable substance which assembles, erodes, and reforms in real time.

With a burgeoning backcatalogue spanning standout releases on YUKU, Woozy and her home-based collective CRTTR, Chewlie is no stranger to producing deadly effective and highly imaginative bass music. On Seeking Pattern, Chewlie’s already fluid approach to genre-melding melts into pure liquid form. The EP feels exploratory by design, driven by a desire to constantly reconfigure and drift, while still sustaining a coherent sonic arc. Across the release, grooves emerge tentatively, snap into focus, then dissolve again, as if the tracks are constantly testing new configurations mid-flight. This is club music that functions through motion rather than fixation – perpetually in flux, never settling long enough to feel static.

Joy Has A Habit Of Returning opens the EP in a suspended, eerie space as a pad slowly laps and shimmers against fragments of dubbed-out vocals and rimshots. Things coalesce into a lattice as a rhythm slowly teaches itself how to exist, whilst tension accrues through low-end pressure and accumulating impacts. Energy rises here through replacement – patterns shedding themselves as more frenetic forms interlock, keeping the track in a state of continuous, unsettled motion.

Energy sharpens on Beluga, where arpeggiated synth lines spiral upward as filtered break patterns splinter into existence. The groove repeatedly fractures, collapsing into a near-broken timeframe that sits on the edge of leftfield bass and deconstructed club. In this compressed, claustrophobic space, breaks thrash and recoil before reassembling into something volatile yet tightly controlled, driven forward by snarling, neuro-tinged bass pressure and shuffling, DnB-steppa-leaning drum tops.

Percussive Interlude functions as the most playful moment of the whole release, leaning into tactility: head-nodding halftime patterns coalesce from scattered hits, playful bass textures flickering in and out like found objects. It feels modular and misaligned – junkyard rhythm, welded together just long enough to groove before drifting apart again.

Caused For The Future pivots into darker territory, opening with foreboding, LFO-warped synth tones. This is quickly juxtaposed by underwater hyperspeed glitch rhythms which glimmer through the darkness, before things dissolve into a sparse halftime pulse assembling itself in realtime. Chewlie’s storytelling sensibilities are fully on display here as the track ricochets through rhythms and landscapes, surfacing above the viscous liquidity before firmly diving back down into dense walls of techy, rolling sub-bass.

On Matteuccia, featuring Tokyo duo Herbalistek, a sparse environment pulls the listener in with dubbed out textures and eerie synth tones. From this sparse opening, a weighty halftime DnB-inflected framework gradually asserts itself, mutating as abrasive bass tones filter viscously into the system.

Closing out the EP is Avant. Here, eerie chimes and grime-flecked synths ring out like the prelude to a digital ritual, calling into negative space before an elastic, dub-contorted rhythm begins to take shape. Patterns smear and reform, briefly resolving into a moment of regal drone-like harmony – the most luminous passage on the record – before being pulled back into a shifting zone of LFO-modulated bass and swung halftime momentum. The rhythm continuously reconstructs itself here, less a destination than a process unfolding in motion.
Seeking Pattern is aptly named, not as a promise of resolution but as a description of the EP’s underlying method. Across its runtime, Chewlie treats rhythm and structure as things to be searched for rather than imposed – drifting through forms, testing their limits, and allowing grooves to reinvent themselves in real time. The result is a release that finds coherence in perpetual movement.

Production process funded by Kulturförderung Stadt & Kanton Bern, Burgergemeinde Bern 

crédits

paru le 1 avril 2026

2026, Maloca

Artwork by @juicychewlie
Graphic design by @baud.w
Mastering by @hypna__
Promo text by @niqhniqhniqh