There is a sense of perpetual entropy that defines the best work of polymath, DJ A-Tech. Within his tracks, sounds mutate, worlds converge, and take on dense forms that demand the rapt attention of revellers and summon them to the dancefloor. For the rising disc jockey, the aim has always been to use the music in the service of his audience and help them reach euphoria. That much was visible from his first single, “Opa Eyin,” a collaboration with Classykinging that displayed the DJ’s intuitive knack for rhythmicity and spotlighting that have helped him evolve as a disc jockey and music curator in a career that’s into his eighth year.
Born Ayomide Omonira, DJ A-Tech has spent his life dedicated to music and elevating the culture around it. He’s worked as a disc jockey for nearly a decade and has dabbled in event promotion. He’s also the curator behind the popular event series, TymOut with DJ A-Tech.
Inspired by acts like Fela, 2face, DBanj, Don Jazzy, Wizkid, Olamide, and Davido, DJ A-Tech’s music is a polyrhythmic fusion of house music with the percussive grit of afrobeats with lyrics that traipse effortlessly between English, Yoruba, and pidgin while being thematically centred on the pursuit of a good time. In many ways, that’s the motivation for DJ A-Tech’s 2022 extended play, The Reset. In a bid to release a definitive thesis of his sound and ID, the disc jockey collected some of his most prized collection and remixes into one place.
Few songs capture the sense of endless elation and bombast that DJ A-Tech aims for as much as “Like That,” a collaboration with Oscar Dice that was intended to set the pace for a bacchanal. Across the expanse of the song, Oscar Dice leads an invocation on how to have a great time at parties and how men and women should act on a night out.
On the song’s first verse, we are reminded that Lagos comes alive at midnight for party-goers and thrill-seekers. On the song’s second verse, we are thrown into the thick of the party as we are schooled in the specifics of how dance moves go down, and the dance moves that enliven the party, while both acts serve up a notice of their plans to take the Nigerian music industry by storm. There are signs of the patented DJ A-Tech sound on the instrumental produced by him: skittering percussions, wavy synthlines, and booming bass undergirding Oscar Dice’s vocals.
As street-pop–a melodic street-inspired variant of afropop–has risen to popularity over the last few years, songs like “Like That” offer a portal into the quirks, historionics, and motivations of acts from the street looking to make a name for themselves. “Like That” is layered over a lively instrumental that gives no quarter and loops in elements of the fast-rising mara sub-genre that is fast becoming a staple of the mainstream. In all, “Like That,” in all of its percussive glory and unencumbered lyricism, offers a glimpse of afrobeats’ future as sounds from the streets proudly take their place at the front of the culture.
Written By: Wale Oloworekende
