Baauer : U
Never has Baauer come across this happy, bubbly, and curiously straightforward on a single record. The Brooklyn beatmaker and “Harlem Shake” author is eons away from that viral breakthrough that initially put him on the map—earlier albums Aa and Planet’s Mad very swiftly saw him distance himself from memes and the like. Both projects are densely packed with massive trap beats, not dissimilar to the early-2010s controlled chaos of off-kilter club duo TNGHT. But it’s not 2012 anymore, nor is it 2020—the latter being the year when Planet’s Mad came out. Baauer dropping much of the rap and pop features and replacing them with grimy, cavernous jungle instrumentals was indicative of the locked-down times surrounding its release. The planet was, indeed, mad.
Six years later, his new record U is the complete opposite of Planet’s Mad, filled with sunshine house, and coming from a planet that has everything put together. In fact, Baauer has put it together with an ecstatic set of subgenres: French house, garage house, and breakbeat. There’s a “party like it’s 1999” lustre all over U’s entire half-hour or so, a celebratory rhythmic undercurrent pioneered by late ’90s dance juggernauts such as Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers, and Cassius. If Baauer sought to create an existential album with Planet’s Mad, U is deliberately everything but, and in his own words: “super happy music.”
Presented as a continuous mix with each of its tracks just barely a couple of minutes long, U plays like a snappy, sunset-hours DJ set reminiscent of the classic eclectic compilations from esteemed club institution Ministry of Sound. The gapless sequencing is designed with little opportunity to breathe, but is appealing as Baauer fulfills his mission to smother dancers with euphoric dance-floor fillers. The cascading hardcore pianos that open U on “Do U Wanna Get Down?” accentuate that very question, diving into a trifecta of perpetual elation: sample-heavy dance-pop with “Kno U,” funky soulful house on “Way U Do It,” and “Supersonic” combining both sensibilities with additional synths like confetti, scorching big beats, and a groovy wah-wah solo.
Yet few moments resemble the immense, squelchy sub-crushing bass tunes that made Baauer’s music his own. The seductive “Kiss on the Lips” with Brazy gets close, a minute-long excursion from his hard footwork to tribal house, but ends up in parodic Eurohouse territory upon segueing into the Aluna vocal-led “One Last Time.” “Gravity/Chaos Flow” is deceivingly sparkly with KUČKA’s presence, where terrorizing stabs interrupt, but the result is more palatable than hard-hitting. The bright four-on-the-floor beats with disco-house embellishments continue in between, even ending on the gospel-inspired lullaby “Follow U,” but as sincerely anthemic as this all tries to be, U gets stuck in circularity. Besides the sample wizardry, the bits of U that really sound like Baauer are scarce.
As more emotionally uplifting dance music continues to arrive crashing like a tidal wave, offering a respite that hasn’t felt so necessary in a long time, Baauer’s U excels at that support, but too much so that it’s at the detriment of an equally vital element for a total success: Tangibly feeling a singular artist is behind the music.
Label: LuckyMe
Year: 2026
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