Lukid At Juno Download

Review: Since debuting on Werk Discs in 2007, Lukid - otherwise known as London-based producer Luke Blair - has proved himself to be one of the UK's foremost producers of experimental beats, operating in the zone where hip-hop, dubstep and squashed techno overlap. Where his previous album was a dark, muggy affair, Lonely At The Top - although similarly stifling - feels like a much more colourful record. The downtempo soul of "Bless My Heart" is like FlyLo on downers but still ripples with flouresence; "Lonely At The Top" is like the squashed dubstep of his classic track "Chord" but through a prism of flange, and Southpaw, although highly compressed and crushed still has its brief moments of rainbow effervescence. But it's the stumbling, Actress-like shuffle of USSR and the hazy 80s pop memory that is "The Life Of The Mind" that show Blair to have a mastery of more experimental shapes and oblique moods. Highly recommended.

Review: Luke Blair aka Lukid made his debut on Werk Discs back in 2007 and since then has been taking his time, shaping his sound into an intricate clutter of post-rave beats and neo-techno rain pour. Once again, "This Dog Can Swim" is an honest depiction of one man's vision, an inherently personal viewpoint on the UK dance scene. The title track sees violent snares bouncing amid deranged, quasi-grime bass lines, distorted and mutated into an unpredictable flurry of melody. "This Dog Can Run" is a slower, more gracious rhythm, distorting and delaying those chords further into ominous waves of sound which swallow their accompanying elements - a subdued bundle of bass drums and hi-hats. The 1991 remix of "This Dog Can Swim" sounds almost Detroitian, with its regular percussion components lingering cautiously beneath a sky of haunting synths. But it's Mass Prod's remix of the same track which causes the most excitement here: the Italian rising talent re-jumbles those drums into a delirious pastiche of beats and chopped-up melodies. A fine remix on an already impressive EP!