★★★☆☆
Celebrated Japanese technician Makoto Shimizu has run with the best in d’n’b down the years, tailoring a fluidity that sometimes plays like an audition for a Guy Ritchie movie. Completely getting the Good Looking aesthetic — the liquid nature of “Innerself” and such races effortlessly with an acceleration approaching a vanishing point — the visualization of the Progression Sessions peacemaker is one of exiting inner city life for the countryside and open road beyond.
Beginning with ultra casual, live translatable funk that’s all drop tops and coffee shops, the collection starting with a motivation for nothing more than the laid-back is something you’re actually hoping this album can’t sustain. Given the cold fresh air that’s forecast, it isn’t really a case of easing you in either, more like swapping your comfy time-killing latte to a swift round of espressos. The jazz-backed, dapper suited, surround sound-flicking drum & bass is as much about unwinding as winding your waist to, although “Enterprise” provides energetic jungle breaks for an easy rough-smooth contrast and an instant old skool flavour not just plundering mid-late ’90s D&B IQ.
Arguably Makoto’s control is for those who might class themselves as d’n’b fans from afar; it undeniably fosters its own fading into the background by its sense of the dreamy and spacious being too neat and tidy. It finishes as it starts, with barely a sweat gland exposed.
File under: EZ Rollers, LTJ Bukem, Eveson