Spare, slow burning soul with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at its core, from 1989 Detroit, courtesy of the Inner City milieu. On the flip, the dubwise club mix of I’m Losing Control is ace Motor City house, with heavy, grooving bass, splashing drum machine, and driving-by-night keys.
A bobbing, minimal groover from the Berlin corner, dug-in and funked-up over ten minutes; and icily original, top-dog work from Pev, tethered between a kind of arrested Highlife and a Detroit breakout.
A moody, dubwise, to-the-barricades brew of jungle, rave, dubstep, and techno.
Over the five cuts, an opening, evocative, littoral play between discombobulation and mysticism gives way to mounting abrasiveness, before fetching up in the inner chambers of the temple room, echoing and spooky, with acoustic percussion.
Killer EP. Next-level Shackleton.
Taking off from Beaugars Seck’s foundational sabar drum rhythms — recorded by Sam in Dakar in February 2020 — Shackleton has constructed a trio of intricately layered, luminous, enchanted, epic excursions. The second is more dazzled and meandering, with jellied bass, insectile detail, and discombobulated jabbering; the third is more liquid, fleet of foot, and psychedelic, with a grooving b-line and funky keyboard stabs, scrambled eastern strings and hypnotic vocalese.
The harmonium in The Overwhelming Yes sounds like Nico blowing in chillily from up the desert shore.
The overall mood is wondrous, twinkling with light, onwards-and-upwards; an uncanny, dubwise mix of the ancient and the futuristic.
Mark Ernestus’ Version is stripped, trepidatious, mystical, and stranger still, with just a snatch of the original melody, extra distortion and delay, and crystal-clear drum sound.
So… Twenty minutes of startlingly original music, with Shackleton the maestro at the top of his game, and a characteristically evilous dub by Mark Ernestus. Mastered by Rashad Becker; handsomely sleeved.
Sick to the nth. Love 4 Ever.
Magnificent, extended interpretation of his own Rastaman Camp classic for Studio One; this time with Niney at the controls. More trenchant and purposeful, less ecstatic. Burning, jazzy horns stand in for the nyabinghi drums of the earlier cut. Freddie slays it. ‘Throw away your folly.’