Pee Gonzalez - Whuz The P? (Sub Rosa)

On Whuz The P?, Belgian producer Smimooz reworks and restyles tracks by hip hop activist Pee Gonzalez into a largely instrumental album of deliberately aggressive beats pulled from graffiti-styled vocals. The opener '13.11.73' (Pee's DOB?) shatters any preconceptions and pulls the listener firmly onto the side of in-yer-face Euro-style rap aggression, with an overall feel not a million miles away from the ground-breaking La Haine soundtrack. The title-track is a less brain-draining assault, settling back into a dark, percussive groove. Move swiftly to 'Tripp'n Trankill' and the whole affair is mellowing down nicely into a continental jazz jungle affair. 'Sozy Kaizer' (surely not a refernce to The Usual Suspects?!) and 'L'Abstract-Autor Du Vice' stay true to the originals by pulling in some of Pee's original vocals, but using them more as rhythmic samples than standard rap sessions.

This album definitely peaks in the middle with the tracks 'De Puta Madre On The Wheelz Of Steel' and 'Le Nine En Main'. But the closer - 'Sychobooz' makes the trawl through the second half well worth it, with the jazzy vibes being enhanced by a nice muted trumpet sample (previously explored on the track 'Strictly Bario Sound'). This is apparently the first album in a series of collaborations between Sub Rosa and 9mm Records - so stay tuned for more... 9/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Kirlian - Pleasure Yourself (Disko B)

The head honcho behind three New York record labels and resident at NY's Limelight club, Kirlian IS Carlos Abraham Duque. In Pleasure Yourself he serves up a streetwise tranche of Hispanic space-jazz trip-hop, which excels in percussive perfection, proving that house beats and bleeps are built to last. Tracks such as 'Porzellangasse' and 'Follow' bounce away at 160BPMs, all highly mixable, but in need of some colourful remix treatment to make them full main courses, rather than smooth, sweet desserts. An oasis in the middle of this pulsating madness comes in the form of from an altogether more human, sensitive slice of laid back, scratched-up trip hop: 'Mission'. That's a track which makes this LP worth seeking out on its merits alone. With a bizarre syth theme tune, 'Dysonsphere' (aptly subtitled 'An Example Of A Dumb Way To End An Album'!) and a full four minutes of answer-phone messages from techno celebrities clipped on as an appendage, this is the cheekiest futurist disco album since Deee-Lite's World Clique. 8/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

The High Llamas - Cold and Bouncy (Alpaca)

As the High Llama's return with the follow-up to last year’s Hawaii, this is just the sort of thing you might expect from a band that have recently returned from touring the other side of the Atlantic with Stereolab. Picture Monty Python buffoons performing cocktail jazz with an electronica technician pondering away in the background and you have ‘The Sun Beats Down’. This and tracks such as ‘Tilting Windmills’ have an English vocal air that removes it from the realms of dance music and is much more reminiscent (very reminiscent, in fact) of screwball English poets XTC from their pseudo-psychedelic Skylarking era! But there are two sides to every story and tracks such as ‘HiBall Nova Scoptia’ and ‘Time’ on the other hand offer classic sixties-style themery and romance. The former being the sort that Corduroy used to specialise in before they made a video with Barbera Windsor, with the latter being particularly reminiscent of Stereolab's recent Dots & Loops excursion. As this album progresses, more elements and angles are included like the strange electronique meanderings of ‘Bouncy Glimmer’ and ‘Evergreen Vampo’. Cold & Bouncy is - as it sounds - a strangely compelling mixture. 7/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine

Robin Rimbaud - The Garden is Full Of Metal (Sub Rosa)

After just two minutes of The Garden is Full Of Metal, you know you're listening to a album that's bound together by an overall cohesion and energy which makes it difficult to press FFWD, not to mention STOP. This album is a shimmering, precision-science 45 minute piece of ambient homage to the recently deceased, much-missed and superbly innovative film maker Derek Jarman. It also sees Robin Rimbaud put his Scanner pseudonym to one side and prove that there's more to his music than the quirky telephone conversation samples, which the mainstream media have raved about, often overlooking the music with which they were interwoven.

A close friend of Jarman, Rimbaud provided the soundtrack for his film 'The Last of England'. He also recorded many of their private conversations and draws from these with samples layered across the album. The vocal snippets are manipulated in such a way as to be intriguing, captivating and at times touching. But the album works best when Scanner's deeply honed ambient musicianship comes into play. The second track, 'Experience' is a perfect example. This private homage to Jarman is taken one stage further with a 7 minute film, hidden away on a CD-Rom section of the album. 10/10


This review also published in: DJ magazine