Late spring-cleaning time, meaning this is a speed round. All are
items I’ve liked but never got to for one reason or another, and many
are very late—like, try last September, when Berlin producer
Oliver $ teamed up with Deize Tigrona to make the
splendid pseudo-Rio carioca funk of “Tá Com Medo De Mim?”
(Man). Catch up with it as I did, on the excellent new Funk
Mundial compilation. Or try late December, when Detroit house god
Moodymann—now just calling himself Moody—released
the Det.riot ’67 EP (KDJ), a concise mini-suite in which the
producer does all the things he does best: mumbles (the brilliant
“Freeki Mutha F cker”), samples old news broadcasts (“Det.riot”), and
layers keyboard tones over thick bass like sumptuous fog.
House of House‘s “Rushing to Paradise (Walkin’ These
Streets)” (Whatever We Want) hit in January and its 13 florid,
continually shifting minutes are as epic as its length suggests. It’s
the most satisfying track I’ve heard from the recent wave of Balaeric
nostalgia—airy, slo-mo atmosphere against piano and, eventually,
a leather-lunged male-diva vocal. For house of a more-recent vintage,
the Field‘s “The More That I Do” (Kompakt) does more of the
thing the Field always do, but feels more like a song than a track,
even though it’s no such thing, while Lee Jones‘s “Lab” (Aus) is
a deliciously listenable percussion exercise from the English producer
who used to make downtempo as Hefner.
Speaking of English dance music, big thumbs-up to Boy Better
Know‘s “Too Many Man” (Boy Better Know), in which grime MCs Shorty,
Skepta, Wiley, JME, and Frisco hilariously fess up to the aspects of
their scene that seem like a nut-grabbing contest, and Meleka‘s
“Go (Crazy Cousinz Remix)” (Crazy Cousinz), a savvy update of
early-’00s two-step garage, especially the stuttering vocal hook (“I
don’t wanna be with you”). Speaking of the “hardcore continuum” (Simon
Reynolds’s term for UK soundsystem styles running from jungle and
two-step to dubstep and grime), there’s Akira Kiteshi‘s
preposterous “Pinball” (Black Acre), in which dubstep goes to the
arcade and gets swallowed whole.
Finally, three locals I love. U.S.E, “All the World”
(Mannheim Worldwide)—concentrates the band’s pleasures in one
hyper burst. Dyme Def, “Not That Dude” (800 LB.)—droll,
perfectly calibrated vocal interplay and one of the nicest drum tracks
in ages. And Telekinesis, “Tokyo” (Merge)—you try
getting it out of your head. 