Don Rimini

French producer Rimini's dance music thunders with the same bristly synths that power sets from oft-cited selectors Switch or Italy's Crookers. Kick 'N Run packs techno and electro that settles for nothing less than perpetual overdrive. Rimini's "Bust a Move" remix, a storm of vocal cut-ups and electric-drill–like peaks on Delicious Vinyl's recent Rmxxology, found a cast of peers dawdling in his wake. He evidently has the banger end down, but Kick 'N Run spotlights the deft arrangement ability that earned his "Let Me Back Up" such endless approval this year. EP stunner "Nervous Breakdown" is one such animal — the liftoff's bare kicks are soon dressed in scorching riffs, and Rimini's candy talkbox blurts render this standout aptly named. The scale-climbing synths on "Rave On" are just as raw, but Kick 'N Run's dose of grit is held off until "Hools." Stamped with a gunshot effect that sounds cribbed from a Clinton Sparks mixtape, "Hools" ends the EP in the only fashionable way: Rimini blasts out the back door in an ultracompressed assault of punk distortion and cymbal crashes. Getting kicked hurts like hell.