Hip-hop accents galore-electro cowbells and keyboard chords, hardcore vocal lines, etc.-enhance the big bassline and varied rhythms of this one, which gets a sleeker, darker remix by Paul Reset. A big, bad jam from this Glasgow label.
Cridge & Tasha Gwan Now!!
Dave Cridge, head of Bristol’s Tribe imprint, teams up with American DJ Tasha to let ya know that drum & bass has well retained its ragga roots. Rugged, subtly placed vocal samples, half-time chords and them damn sirens decorate the buzz-bass-&-Amen scheme of the title tune, while the flip’s “Cuban Lingo” hands over skillfully arranged, conga-heavy Latin flavor. Ace.
DJ Quest Oil Drum
It’s Quest from the UK, not the SF scratch hamster, so keep your shorts on. “Oil Drum” goes the straight-ahead nu-breaks route, buzzing a three-note bassline over a thumping beat with bits of space-vacuum noise flitting about. The flip’s more electro-tinged “The Raid” offers up the same hot, dark sounds, but unfortunately suffers an overworking of its vocal sample. Still, solid stuff for the floor.
abicah Soul Meets GU S/t
Chicago dons DJ Stax and Glen Underground go the laidback, Latin-jazzy route over three tracks that emphasize Stax’s shuffly rhythms and GU’s smooth synth improv. Although some parts of “Negro Yosoy Peligro” fall into the cheeze column, it’s all good in face of the thumpy “Esta Hermosa Cancion.” For the lounge, where we all need to be at points.
JOHN ARNOLD Anaconda
For those of us who doubted nu-jazz’s staying power, Detroit’s Mr. Arnold opens a can of Oh No You Fucking Don’t. “Anaconda” finds him lacing a crisp and quick Afrobeat-style rhythm with some techno synth action, while on the flip he offers up a boosted cover of Herbie Hancock’s criminally overlooked “Rough,” in which he lands vocalist Ayro into a forest of pure wah. Rude for the dancefloor.
Masta Killa Digi Warfare
Your boy Elgin Turner, the ninth member of that Wu bunch (who are ’bout to cut a contract with Tariq Aziz’ hear), gets loose old-school style on an uptempo Eric B.-ish rhythm laced with scratch noise and electric cowbell. On the flip’s “No Said Date,” the tempo remains up, and the Killa flows with that inimitable subtlety alongside those sweet Wu strings, lettin’ ya know that if “truth be the life preserver, ya can’t drown.” No, the Wu hasn’t gone anywhere, and yet they’re still back.
Alexi Delano & Robert Manos Round and Round Remixed
Statra round up a dream trio of post-house remixers to have a crack at Delano & Manos’s sleeper vocal jam from last summer. Metro Area give it their subtle Reagan-era synth tinge, while JT Donaldson stays in classic territory with a new bassline. It’s Webster who takes the tune to understated yet narcotic heights, subsuming the rhythm in a dusky electronic atmosphere. State of the art.
Bryan Gee The Sound of Movement
You can’t divorce drum & bass from the dancefloor, and The Sound of Movement shows why you would never, ever want to. The mix-by V Recordings honcho Bryan Gee-is 100% pure fire, kicking off with a jumpy remix of the Roni Size classic “Trust Me,” and swerving back and forth between soaring vocal melodic numbers and rough, bassline-driven tracks. As the title suggests, it’s an excellent representation of the kind of tracks and rapid-fire mixing that packs ’em in at the long-running Movement Thursday night at London’s Bar Rumba. Gee’s mixing can be sloppy at times, but that hardly matters as Dillinja’s “Warning” segues into J Magik & Sonic’s “New Generation” and all hands go flying in the air. Lightaaaah!
Klute Lie Cheat and Steal/You Should Be Ashamed
Klute simultaneously goes with the grain and against it on this two-disc set. Despite the dark title, Lie Cheat & Steal kicks off with lush, meandering drum & bass, awash in synthetic strings and airy melodies underpinned by sturdy, dancefloor-ready breaks and bass. The tracks are beautifully arranged, stately and atmospheric-entirely what listeners have come to expect from this d&b stalwart. On the second CD, Klute veers off the beaten path, serving up leftfield breaks, early-’90s techno and swirling downtempo, among other genres. You Should Be Ashamed might be an apt title, considering that most diehard d&b fans will probably recoil in horror when confronted with the horrorcore trip bleeps of “Black Flag,” the Banco de Gaia-style ethno beats of “Artificial Sense” and the proto-gabber of “Jamm the Box.” Whether or not this amounts to Commercial Suicide is the consumer’s decision, but you’ve gotta respect this ex-punk rocker for showing his multiple personalities, even if those personalities sometimes want to make tweaker techno.
El Guapo Fake French
The DC-based trio El Guapo creates earnest three-minute sonatas that could almost be called art punk if they weren’t so, well, electronic. Using drum machine pounding and clacking as a starting point, they haphazardly arrange stop/start indie-rock guitars, off-kilter drumming and cryptic vocals into a fusion that at best sounds like a new wave Sonic Youth (“Justin Destroyer,” “The Time: Night”) and at worst sounds like amateurish electro (“Just Don’t Know”). I’d say Fake French finds the former free-jazz outfit settling into an endearing dance-punk sound, but this threesome values experimentation so much that their next album could well mix black metal with alt-country.
