Drum’n’bass has a sneaky relationship with tempo. Measured one way, its rhythms tumble forward at a breakneck pace. But cock your head and focus instead on the downbeat, and the beat suddenly settles into a half-time sway. It’s this ambiguous character—the rhythmic equivalent of a lenticular image—that makes jungle and dancehall reggae so compatible: Dancehall’s 80 BPM saunter dovetails perfectly with jungle’s 160 BPM gallop. On “Mai,” the lead track of a recent four-track EP for Berlin drum’n’bass label Samurai, Italian electronic musician Donato Dozzy makes the most of the genre’s half-time qualities.

Dozzy’s music is known for its hypnotic, even psychedelic qualities, in which intricate drum programming and subtly shape-shifting synthesizers roll in ceaseless waves. Though he typically makes techno, he took a stab at drum’n’bass on a 2019 remix for the Seattle producer Homemade Weapons, turning double-barreled breaks into an uneasy industrial lurch. “Mai” is even woozier. Beginning with a lead-footed kick drum and a smeared gray loop of tone, it moves forward with grim determination, like windshield wipers sweeping away volcanic ash. The song’s essential elements are all more or less present from the very first few bars, but over the course of the next four minutes, Dozzy applies subtle pressure to the mix, punching up the brightness on silvery shakers. Almost imperceptibly, the emphasis shifts, from dragging feet to fibrillating heartbeats. By the end, the groove feels neither fast nor slow, but some strange hybrid of the two, flickering in place and hovering weightless in the air.