Thursday, August 7, 2008  12:10 am 

Blood clots and coat-tails

Excellent gentleman & veteran from the Barcelona trenches Ssssamuel Strang’s back to the 20JFG with some more sweet music & his trademark superb writing, you know this means good times. Enjoy muchly kids, and thank him in the comment box below.

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Head cocked into neck finding a way through the veins, another dose of haemorrhaging hip-hop is working its way through the system, sifting through the blood clots. After the recent lethargic humdrum of lurking backpacker beats on show either side of the Pacific, with tag teams Samiyam alongside Flying Lotus’s skulk on one side and Rustie with Hudson Mohawke on the other, it’s an obvious climb to approach. But rather than stubbornly stand on the coattails of those recent lumbering beatniks, LA producer Ras G (and his Afrikan Space Programme) lays down thick trails of those same loutish basslines but hanging off archive soul hooks, a syrupy bog of hiccupping samba tussles and glitching space age loops coming on like hot flushes.

Offbeat as if stumbling about in a lethargic codeine stupor, most fervent are the garbling undercurrents of pulsating 808 punches. As if some lurid wet dream where J Dilla’s syncopated snatches molest the lucid jazz odysseys of Sun Ra like bulls rearing up to each other in the afternoon sun, bits of venomous gumption are fed into the stew, rugged beats rumbling around apathetically underground ‘til they’re pulled up like heavy beetroots tugged from the soil. Tasty, lugging morsels with dancefloor desires too late in life.

Ras G- 5 A.M. Spliff

Ricocheting ‘round, coated in carousel chimes and deadened chants that sulk rather than soar, rabid Atlantan loop auteur Dog Bite (né Phil Taylor) hum and haws like Vini Reilly working his way through Caetano Veloso’s back-catalogue, a carnival spirit sedated. Offering up muted melancholic blows like Panda Bear caught drifting in and out of a coma, it’s the sound of a man slowdancing to the sounds of his own decay. A carnal beast of many guises (see the bruised hunking riffs sat beside his wistful lulls under his Body Body moniker) this is one for those of an Atlas Sound persuasion with its rich pop plateau of White Rainbow mugging sounds that his ‘The Owls and Eyes EP’ rips.

Dog Bite- On the Air

labels >> Dog Bite, Ras G, Ssssamuel Strang'

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