Under The Influence

Stumbled upon this little gem whilst pillaging Tolcha related material from emusic. It features Dallas (from Fat Freddy's Drop), one of my favourite vocalists. There are 3 versions on the album (um yeah, it's a single.... duh!), the original, Soulphiction mix and Tolcha mix. To be honest I've barely stopped to give anything other than the Tolcha remix a chance - I'm all about the Berlin grime.

As usual Dallas delivers a beautiful performance, and coupled with Tolcha's dark and dirty remix skills you get something quite special. A crescendo of broken beats and pulsing bass. I've been listening to it far too loud for altogether too many days now.

Would love to witness a Tolcha / Dallas jam session. In fact, I'd love to see Dallas jamming with lots of European musicians. A match made in heaven.

Nice chilled out bit of work, this one. I guess the basis is dub flavoured, space-dub even. Smooth, ambient space-dub. Reminds me slightly of a New Zealand band, Pitch Black, though it has a lot more background noise going on.

Lots of padded synths, acid synths and drum machines. There's not a single track on the album that I'd call upbeat in any way. Not that that's a problem, just don't put this one on when you're getting ready to go out clubbing.

This one is getting the prize for most enjoyed album I've given to other people recently. There are a handful of people that I've shown this one to that seem to have fallen in love with it. I haven't listened to it enough to get to this stage but I can see why. I put it down to the super slick dubbed out hip hop production work.

There's plenty of variation in pace from soul vibes in Talk to Me to head nodding use of Beastie Boys samples in Got To Rock. The two city named tracks, Manchester and Milwaukee feel like abstract Shadow/RJD2 productions.

There are guest vocalists all over the place here (a different one on each track). We even get treated to the current favourite in my house of residence, Skinny Man.

If you're off to go chill out in the sunshine anytime soon put this one on the top of the playlist. You really won't regret it.

One of the albums I picked up in my hunt for random eastern block music a couple of months back. I think it's actually a guy who lives in Amsterdam now but the influence still shines through.

It's an interesting blend of sounds. Half of it is modern disco - lots and lots of those beow beow things they like to do so much. Fun, light housey beats (which makes sense given that House was basically squeezed out of disco in the first place). Flips it over and the other half is dub.

Many of the songs sway over towards the eastern side - hectic pumping accordion based numbers. Drunk n Space is a good example - though it drops away into a dub vibe halfway through which is pretty cool. The following song, Orbital Hora, is a dub track for that matter (though with more western eurpoean sounding accordion work).

Lots of different influences coming into play. I suspect the man may be well travelled.