Pegboard Nerds & Ahee – Be Free

43%%Overall Score

• What’s going on with the vocals?
• Creative switch between drops
• Arcade-like lead with a 00’s vibe

Being always first in line to commend genuine experiments and deploring boring and “safe” releases, I feel sorry to do so now. This one here, is simply too much.

Dharma Worldwide, by far, remains as one of the leading brands in rewarding its admirers with unusual ideas, yet this is one of the worst tracks I have heard so far in their entire publishing, further made by one of my favourite duos in the Dubstep panorama, Pegboard Nerds. “Be Free” features an unfamiliar name for me, AHEE, who apparently had more influence in this bizarre get-up, as he’s focusing on left-field ideas considering glitchy Dubstep.

What happened here? I simply think that “Be Free” isn’t cut for the preferences of Dharma fan-base, including myself. It is highly radical, a chain reaction mostly kickstarted by the vocal. It’s a slower Gospel chorus that inputs a sizeable personality, right before getting polluted by unnecessary high-pitched fills and screeching arcade leads, in a 2000s fashion. It deficient in grasping attention properly with such unbalance, and the drop briskly comes over, switching to and fro between classic Dubstep design and a more Electro House scheme.

It’s haphazard is what it is, with different vocals and constant variations, leaving the spectator dumbfounded and thus disappointed after the show. Bringing about all these vocal shots together generated a mess, even if the drop’s programming is intriguing. In an act of over-ambition, Pegboard Nerds and AHEE burned a good recipe with too much fire.

Handle it with care.