Previously fusing ambient, jazz, and indie on several Apollo-issued EPs under the moniker Kasket, Charlie Baldwin drastically changed directions when he switched to the Cocktail Party Effect project in 2016. Rediscovering his love for U.K. bass music, he began making more club-centric tracks, bending techno and garage rhythms out of shape and keeping things funky, heady, and weird. Landing on Pinch's phenomenal Tectonic label with the 2019 EP Shattered Retina, Cocktail Party Effect's self-titled full-length followed in 2020, and it's by far the densest, heaviest, deadliest thing Baldwin has released. "Talking to Bricks," featuring take-no-prisoners rhymes from Bristol MC Redders, is a brash, explosive grime anthem, so blown up and preposterous that it's almost funny. "For the Memory Exchange" contorts choppy breakbeats and overpowering bass zaps into an irresistible mutant garage roller. The album just gets more outlandish from there, balancing the sonar pings and twitchy but propulsive beats of the relatively calm "PDA" with the disorienting firepower of "War on Codex," then going far off the deep end with the frenetic, scattered drill'n'bass of "Cause for Bad Shelving" and "I Get It (Lost Banknote)." More ambient moments such as the organ dirge "Lack of Wrong Format" or the reflective "Loner" are disconcerting and alien rather than calm or pleasant. Truly a boundless, unpredictable album, Cocktail Party Effect is exhilarating from start to finish.