- At this point, no one can keep up with Leeds' David Kennedy because no one really knows where he went. No matter how far off the radar he wanders, however, his tracks are still firmly danceable and even mixable—check the attention-hogging "Work Them" section of Kode9's recent DJ-Kicks for proof. His two tracks for Loefah's Swamp81 label are some of his most out-there, marrying his usual percussive penchant to the experimental tendencies displayed on his recent self-titled Hessle Audio EP.
After two or so minutes of noodling with sparse drums and whistles that twirl and bend into odd shapes, Kennedy kills "Fall Short" dead in its tracks with a simple bass riff. It's a cartoon atom bomb, hitting the ground and exploding exponentially in low-end intensity. Out of the immediate aftermath emerges the song's steady shuffling beat, made up of subterranean kick drums and the detonation of abandoned underground missiles. The pitch-shifted vocals are typical Ramadanman, microscopically shaking and occasionally doubling up on themselves before disintegrating. He peppers the track with the streaming pastel organ tones he's been so fond of lately, altering the mood from hallucinogenic to Eno-esque dreaminess with simple chord changes.
A true double A-side single, "Work Them" manages to overshadow "Fall Short." Hyped beyond belief mostly because of its pseudo-juke programming that can't help but recall Addison Groove's smash "Footcrab," "Work Them" shares the same over-the-top twitchy weirdness. Taking its time to build a steady march out of jerky drums that swing in place like a particularly flamboyant military brigade, it's the unforgettable vocal sample that sets things off. The thickly-accented "work them" is repeated incessantly until it becomes aggressively hypnotic, and the effect is psychedelic as water droplets begin to ripple down the walls and the sub-bass swallows up the earth.
The atmosphere is tense, as panic-inducingly fathomless as it is suffocatingly claustrophobic. Kennedy periodically pulls out that stringy organ, weighing the track down until everything threatens to slide right off into some blindingly bright, overwhelming abyss. Then, of course, he snaps the beat right back into place as if nothing happened. But for a second—that one moment of pure sound and uninhibited colour—he sounds pretty close to nirvana. That, or he's just messing with our heads.
Tracklist A Fall Short
AA Work Them