Intercontinental duo go full throttle
Who?
One is Ma Sha, a producer and singer who spent their adolescent years breakdancing, and then moved to New York when they were 18. The other is Rù, a producer who grew up on a farm in central Italy and has been known to treat Ableton like it’s their therapist. Together, they are Sha Ru (makes sense), an experimental electronic duo who nowadays split their time between New York and Berlin.
Why Sha Ru?
It’s almost impossible to define one particular genre that these two operate in – if their music one day happened to grow legs and take the form of a creature it would probably be some sort of misshapen, violently multicoloured hybrid with at least two heads. And while that might sound monstrous, rest assured that the music is anything but.Flavours of breakbeat (‘Duga Bass’), electro (‘PCCCC’), techno (‘It’s A Forest Rave’) and hardcore (‘VOID’) are all held together by a beating heart of club-ready beats and gritty, bass-heavy production. The robotic, processed vocals of Ma Shu are another key part of the sound, and on tracks like ‘Temperatura’ and ‘Synced Energies’ – where the vocals lead from the front and the music follows – Sha Ru are obviously in their element.
Tell Us More…
The pair set up their own Kindergarten label during the first few months of lockdown, and have since put out 13 dance-infused releases across a period of three years, including some of their own material. Their latest EP, ‘Time Turns Liquid’, has just been released by Berlin label Jupiter4 and there’s a lot to love about it – not just because of the unflinching, hard-edged nature of the music, but also because it is far more conceptual than previous Sha Ru releases and, as a result, makes for an incredibly satisfying listen.
‘Time Turns Liquid’ is out on Jupiter4
