★★★☆☆
Sophistication, grace, mercy, complexity…Paul Anthony doesn’t care for such things on this release of nearly two hours of hot and bothered, riff-a-rific tech-house. From back to front it’s an incessant stamp of infuriating blips and squeaks pushing trebles over the edge, and basslined pumps revved into action by starter pulley.
Wrenched acid, bro-step/breaks loans and a hyped up pair of barbershop clippers assist in Anthony’s headbangers’ ball blazing something filthy. Not outwardly X-rated (okay, there is “Kangaroo Butt Sex,” but that’s just nonsense packed off with pogo sticks), but a wire wool scrub down becomes essential when done with Anthony’s can’t stop-won’t stop blitz (“Shake Dat Ass” convulsing to the brink) from Dutch house running into Chicago’s ghetto gutters on a rockstar whim. “Cream Pie” with its digi-sax/”Destination Calabria” lick, opens more available doors on a record where the underlying ethos is defiantly if you can’t beat us, join us, the likes of the toothy “Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew” too infectiously gnarled not to get down to.
Suffice to say variation is minor, carnage rolling out of soaring/preset builds and breakdowns, though using the time-honored “in the beginning there was Jack” vocal gives “Drums of Life” a different outlook, watching booty bass belly dancer “Do the Dance” rides the grating/contagious divide. Knuckle-headed in parts, but it makes no apologies for making the club feel the back of its hand.
File under: Nick Thayer, Bass Kleph, Bassnectar