Superb, sexed-up, Paradise Garage disco fire, produced by Jesse Boyce and Moses Dillard.
Three brilliant re-routings of Detroit machine funk — Moodymann in particular — into deep mid-Atlantic co-minglings with raw, old-school hiphop and house.
Str8 Crooked is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; Build Back Better Sweatshops is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an uptempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus Episcopi Vagantes pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency.
This is killer dance music, run through with swingeing, parping bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.
Bim bim bim.
Driving Shaka murder. Fury and yearning folded into a perfect blend of digital and old-school music-making. A drum-machine and Bagga Walker from Studio One tear up the dub. Complete with rare, ebullient Colarman toast.
‘Channelling the great chordless trios of Sonny Rollins. An authoritative, belting New Cross blues, a feline Mel’s Mood and a stately, serene When You Know; all with a spontaneous immediacy that allows Ireland’s assured compositions to take unexpected directions. The closer Lips boils over in the outro, with the faders left up to capture the vibe.’
Zarko Komar aka Feloneezy winging in from Belgrade — by way of Hyperdub — with an EP of hypnotic psychedelia.
Four characteristically intimate, steppers blends of jungle and juke, unfurling into intervals of dub and jazz; axis as nexus, threaded with field recordings, startlingly dotted with song.
Check it out.