i was put on this earth EP

If DJ Python wants to tell us something important on his new EP, then he seems a little shy about spitting it out. The record’s title is a declaration—or the start of one?—hedged in lowercase letters, offered without further explanation. Buried among the EP’s invited guests, the producer sings for the first time on a solo Python record, like a reluctant child being pushed into the spotlight.

An obvious comparison for this new frontier in Brian Piñeyro’s career is James Blake’s debut album, where the UK producer first revealed his politely impassioned voice to listeners who had grown up on his gnarled post-dubstep productions. Python’s patented mixture of deep house, left-field electronics, and reggaeton beats has different roots, but the two artists share a certain spirit of stylistic invention and melodic intelligence—not mainstream, exactly, but in conversation with it. i was put on this earth isn’t quite Python’s vocal coming-out—he lent his voice to “III” on his 2023 Natural Wonder Beauty Concept album with Ana Roxanne—but it is his first release on indie powerhouse XL, potentially bringing his music to a wider audience.

Maybe that makes Python’s vocal turn sound like a commercial calculation. But it shouldn’t. i was put on this earth is a bold move couched in some of Piñeyro’s most pointedly low-key production, his floaty, swinging funk nudged several steps further into the infinite. “Marry Me Maia,” the EP’s opening song, has only the suggestion of rhythm, carried along by slivers of crystalline synth and a bassy pulse. “Coquine” sets Piñeyro’s vocal on a bed of eerie instrumental wash and electronic prickle; and “Elio’s Lived Behind My House Forever” (with New York’s Physical Therapy) marries a sluggish electro beat to keyboard melodies that warp and wash like vintage My Bloody Valentine. It is fitting, then, that Piñeyro’s vocals on “Marry Me Maia” and “Coquine” sound a lot like Kevin Shields’: hazy, understated to the point of stupor, but capable of carrying a serious emotional load.

These aren’t the kind of vocal qualities we expect from an artist who ostensibly operates in the world of dance music. There’s no dembow on i was put on this earth, despite the appearance of reggaeton whirlwind Isabella Lovestory on the sprightly “Besos Robados,” and no deep house either. A closer point of reference might be Python’s recent BBC Radio One Essential Mix, in which he spun the spectral electronics of Chloé’s “The Waiting Room” alongside Blonde Redhead, Philip Glass, and Hildur Guðnadóttir & Jóhann Jóhannsson. Like these artists—and, indeed, the Natural Wonder Beauty Concept album—i was put on this earth is big on aura and tone, a carefully stitched work of conspicuous detail.

The EP’s lyrics are suitably abstruse. The title “Marry Me Maia” sounds forthright in its intentions, but the song instead offers cryptic references and obfuscation. The result is like peeping in on a private conversation: fascinating and impassioned but fundamentally obscure. “Dai Buki,” a collaboration with Jawnino, leans into the London rapper’s languid delivery and surreal menace—“Metal things swapping over counters/Nightmares of bouncing”—but is let down by underwhelming production choices, notable a sub-Balearic guitar solo from Organ Tapes that takes the listener out of the song’s gentle gloam.

But if i was put on this earth is esoteric, it’s not unapproachable. On the deepest Bristol of “Besos Robados,” Isabella Lovestory is the Martina Topley-Bird to Python’s Tricky, her airy trill lifting the song into unlikely pop territory, like a New York Maxinquaye. “Elio’s Lived Behind My House Forever,” meanwhile, is electronic shoegaze at its most subtly uplifting, the synth riff perfectly dreamy in its abstraction, like vintage Ulrich Schnauss. Both songs are like inadvertent pop—pop that can’t resist peeping out from behind the electronic shimmer.

Was Python put on this earth to make music like this? Or did the vaporous beauty of Natural Wonder Beauty Concept leave an unexpectedly lasting impression? Either way, the EP is a triumph of gentle reverie and quiet upheaval, one whose delights are more appropriately passed on by whispered word-of-mouth than shouted from the hills.