on heavy rotation in the proverbial boombox:

A tasty re-release of twentysome Channel One classic riddims. Easy to see many influences in recent music. My favourite “Hey that was borrowed!!!” moment came during track three, Herb Cutter, when during a mid-way riddim change, the riddim bassline is obviously the same one used by Blacky in his afropop-reggae hit “Rosie”.

After being blown away by Prefuse73's “the Love you bring” in the middle of a Mixmaster Morris set somewhere on Betalounge, I decided to check out more goodness at the source. The aptly titled “Uprock and Vocal Studies“ is a solid piece of work in the school of DJ Shadow, although no tracks quite reach the stratospheric levels of emotional foolery as “the Love you bring”.

A decent “microhouse” album mellow, introspective, deep, with some blissful moments of uber-chillage. It is almost exclusively instrumental with long and slow musical morphologies. All this fits the microhaus-minimal techno recipe quite well. I read a good review of this album somewhere in the blogosphere and decided to try it out. While I think the review was overly generous, there are two-three really tight tracks in the latter part of the album that push it above and beyond your run of the mill Kompakt compilation.

Another recommendation from my pal at Primitive Records. The first two tracks here are some of the best takes of dub I've heard in a while. Melodic, rumbling bassline riddims and exceptionally musical effect wickedness. If I was to hear this without knowing the title, there is nothing in the style that would really shout out “American dub flavour” .... so either I don't know my dub or the compilers just think UFOs look good over Babylon, um, I mean NYC.