Beautifully Controlled Chaos | Dro Carey

When I linked up with producer Dro Carey, real name Eugene Ward, it wasn’t music we started with, but rather the book he was currently reading. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk centres on Mieczysław Wojnicz, a 24-year-old engineering student who arrives at a Guesthouse for gentlemen to recuperate from tuberculosis. As he settles into regimented life there, he becomes part of a group of male patients who engage in nightly debates over topics like politics, religion, and the nature of women.

“I’m so absorbed in the atmosphere, I’m lingering in it, almost like a video game. I get caught in a single moment or scene because Tokarczuk has this powerful command of aesthetics.”

Along with his deep love of fiction, Eugene has once again found himself absorbed in writing music. It has been four years since we last heard new tracks from the Dro Carey project, and now we have Vital Trails 2 (VT2) out through Steel City Dance Discs. Interestingly, it has been the quality of dance music being made by his peers that has helped draw Eugene out of what he refers to as a “releasing hiatus”. Producers such as Moktar, Surusinghe, Verraco, Danny Daze, emma dj and Big Ever are some who spring to mind.

The extended time away from release schedules and marketing campaigns has helped clarify what he wanted to create next and how he wanted to present it. And let me tell you, VT2 is accompanied by a myriad of energetic and gritty visuals courtesy of Paris-based duo Patric Kuo and Marie Meyer.

“I’ve been fortunate to have a long-running creative partnership with these two. With Patric, it goes back more than 15 years, when we started dreaming things up at high school…Whenever I write a new Dro Carey demo, they are one of the first to hear it because maybe it could be used in something or become something else.”

In 2021, Eugene scored a dance film of theirs called Fibonacci Made Me Hardcore, a gripping 20-minute experience of people expressing themselves unhibited to Dro’s quirky tones. Wildly, the video Patric and Marie put together for the fifth track of the EP, LEAN MANTLES, was shot spontaneously, unbeknownst to Eugene. “It was this amazing surprise. I just opened WhatsApp one day and saw the first cut come through, unprompted. It’s incredible.” In it, a group of teenagers stumble across dancers in a cage fight, which becomes a symbol of the youngsters’ aspirations of strength and manhood—a lovely marriage between sight and sound. Patric and Marie are also responsible for video interpretations of THORNY HARMONY and BOULEVARDER. Another non-musical accompaniment to VT2 is a poem composed by Eugene, a written expression of how the EP makes him feel and what it means to him. “I think it’s the story of music’s development, it comes with its own graphic treatment and type setting. You’ll see!”

VT2 is technically a sequel to Vital Trails, a Dro Carey EP released back in 2013. Though that early project is tucked away in the depths of Bandcamp, it marks a moment in his career that still resonates—one defined by a strong sense of control and genuine personal connection to the music.

“It was the first time I was able to negotiate between weird ideas and some conventions of structure. And I did everything myself on that release, finding a mastering engineer, putting together artwork. Simple, I know, but it was important to me. Plus, there were producers I looked up to who appraised it as a maturing point for what I was doing.”

There’s something satisfying about an artist revisiting that sense of creative alignment years later—naming a new work in its honour, not out of nostalgia, but because the feeling has returned. Even if the two EPs sound different, Eugene’s relationship to them is strikingly similar.

VT2 isn’t for the faint-hearted. Eugene conjures an abrasive world—one where feeling nauseous and dancing rapturously somehow go hand in hand. The tracks lurch forward with tension, daring you to move. A standout for me, “PLAYER EMERGES FROM FOG,” plays like a cinematic escape with the captive close behind: tribal percussion, acidic stabs, and industrial-like tones collide in a beautifully controlled chaos. The whole EP follows this perturbed path, like a car careening through black ice—unstable, exhilarating, and impossible to get out of.