Uitgebracht
September 2011
- As the other Hessle-head-honcho producer, Pangaea has always played the eyes-down, moody experimentalist to David Kennedy's exuberant twitch, whether it's on legendary tunes like "Memories" or "Why" or on more direct, grimy infiltrations like this year's "Inna Daze." The not-so-prolific Kevin McAuley gets his first release in half a year on Untold's Hemlock label, and it's yet another twist down his winding junglist path.
The two tracks here are reinforced distillations of the Pangaea sound, with McAuley's usually precise loops disassembled and rebuilt with a little extra elbow grease, so that they feel like they're careening wildly across the stereo spectrum. On "Hex," the effect is redoubled with a tunneling LFO bassline, at once a bit Reese-like but also the most dubsteppy thing to come out of the Hessle camp in ages, particularly when those rusty rimshots snag at the end of each bar. Completed with a harshly stuttering vocal, what's striking about the ragged ragga of "Hex" is that it completely lacks Pangaea's usual luscious atmospherics, but loses none of the impact. The flipside "Fatalist" goes it one further, bringing the bass up to the surface, gurgling and overflowing like tar over the most primitive percussion McAuley has ever put his name to. One might say Pangaea helped to kick off the vocal garage revival with "Router," and now he's tarnishing the over-polished chrome he inadvertently birthed. I say bring on the scuff marks.
Tracklist A Hex
B Fatalist