Author: Matt Oliver

Album Review: The Digital Kid V The World / ‘A Minor Digital Experiment’ (The Classic Music Company)

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★★★★☆

The Digital Kid is Luke Solomon and The World is a sidekick made up of those that have yet to catch onto his techno-circling sound. As he gives his occasional superhero alias one final run-out and toys with a three-pronged, album/mix/12” format, it’s clearly not a case of getting defensive. Solomon is largely enthusiastic and soulful in his own way, the engine running furiously while attempting to make the ride slide through the gears. On other occasions he’s happy to judder along, doing good things with a pick-n-mix of grooves.

Sending house ambience into the sub-scientific, “VERTIGO” and “Shooting Star” are found hurtling with bare fuss, in a headspace recalling those old MTV videos of changing shapes and colours when they didn’t know what to do with a dance track. Taking it back to acid hangar hang-outs with a hipster lean (“Pass the Toothpaste”) and jackable roots pushed towards the future (“Ahhhrgh”, “Minority Report”), clubbers are told to lock onto the first loop before they’re sent spiralling over long and winding beats: “Angels Looking Down on Me” is saved from being an odd one out of waifish flouncing by the tech mutterings that envelope it.

The Digital Kid’s swansong (or is it?) leaves The World in his wake — playing down his digital experiment allows his techno variables a clear path to dance floor takeover, whatever the crowd.

File under: Music for Freaks, Jonny Rock, Subb-An

Album Review: CMC & Silenta ‘ Get It On Now’ (Roca)

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★★★☆☆

Always looking for a party, established German pair CMC & Silenta host high-five hip-hop as an open mic drop-in, breaks and dub where the funk enjoys friendly rivalry with bass, and throw their doors open to let the sunshine in.

The sense of the album being an invite to everyone means that while always keeping up vivacious momentum, the duo’s hosting capabilities don’t want too many spillages or incidents in locked rooms. Soul romp “The Night is Mine” looks to get the police called, but is by itself in the corner compared to everything being toe-tappingly tidy and welcoming. This is irrespective of whether skanking is afoot (The Ragga Twins orchestrating “This is How We Rollin’”), zingy electro-soul is being zipped up (“Where We Started From”), or a big old diva-lead squelch is taking center stage (“Love is Drawn).

Get It On Now is prophetic – grab the moment, as it’s not always something that you’d remember from the night before once your head and tongue are fuzzy the morning after. The beatboxed “Is It True” strikes out Lyrics Born-style while CMC & Silenta are culpable of moulding everything into one, despite the mass of guests and attempts at styles. As if recorded in one marathon session with beers and barbeque on the go, it’s a solid shindig not without substance, if not something you’ll be saving for a rainy day.

File under: Kraak & Smaak, A Skillz & Krafty Kuts, Basement Freaks

Album Review: ShyOne / ‘Bedknobs & Boomkicks’ (DVA Music)

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★★★★☆

Mali Larrington-Nelson places bass pieces like she’s controlling a chess board, calling checkmate on an intuitive mixture of UK funky, dubstep and grime. Both out-there (it’d have to be with a title like that) and close to the streets so as to enable the underground cognoscenti to reclaim the space-shot sounds, the budding ShyOne is therefore perfect for bass-smith Scratcha DVA to get such a signing on his books.

The future calypso apocalypse “Black Widow” and the roughneck marching band “Lickle Rascal” are testimony to the album being quite loose-limbed yet following through with its punches. On more than one occasion you feel a bunch of emcees would happily crash into the rhythms, but you’re grateful that the instrumentalism lets you skank freely. “Speak Eazy” could actually do with a shot of the rash-mouthed, and “Amazon Swing” sounds undercooked, ported from a session messing around on a console when it doesn’t really have time to. The maximalist soul of “Spring Romance” however shows confidence, ability and that all important range in the producer’s casually fierce, occasionally tropical demeanour that always lets you lock onto the rhythm with very little fuss (“Pastel Requiem”).

Though making a quick exit, ShyOne bubbles with ideas, incisively playing to her own bass-bound rules as she challenges the bouncy with the primeval, the sleek and the hot-headedly choppy to gain in-demand status.

File under: Author, Kode 9, Scratcha DVA

Album Review: Bambounou / ‘Orbiting’ (50Weapons)

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★★★☆☆

Though it’s been a bit of a mixed bag for albums with 50Weapons this year, you know they’re not a label who’ll finish the year quietly. Jeremy Guindo as amateur astrologer Bambounou takes the manipulation of bass to every corner of the universe for the good of speaker harm, putting in the air miles/light years towards a mildly spacey theme throughout his debut LP.

This manipulation makes for a clipped low-end spectrum masking a sometime identity crisis/any bass is good bass theorem. From the off, “Any Other Service” can’t decide whether it’s garage, footwork, dubstep or an unclassified wobbly bass form that’s flicked through the techno family album, yielding the more straightforward beating of “Data.” There’s definitely some 2-step and grime running through “Capsule Process”, though Guindo is up on leaving the beats open ended for all to interpret; and again, he ceases splitting infinitives to then lay down “Splaz,” a work of quicksilver Detroit techno.

Held together by minimalist gravity in no particular order, it’s unclear how KRS-One would react to being chopped into a booty-seeking footwork track, but it’s definitely the Blastmaster holding down “Let Me Get”. Then there’s the maximalist approach taken for the very Jam City “Great Escape,” jerking the flow in discovering new existence, and a homage to the space/electro continuum on “Challenger.” Bambounou sees as many bass opportunities as there are stars in the skies – a thoroughly modern mishmash.

File under: Addison Groove, Sully, Starkey