Slackk At Juno Download

Review: After sturdy appearances on Numbers and Local Action, Slackk returns to one of his earlier outposts in the form of Unknown To The Unknown, throwing down a curious mixture of oriental folk music with grime-inspired beats and the occasional flurry of vintage computer game MIDI business. The beats are slippery and jerky on "Inland" where the synth comes in all side-chained and disjointed, with only gun shots for ballast on the buoyant groove. "Wolf Creek" brings on the aforementioned Monkey Island vibes, using curious keys and harmonies to create a decidedly eerie atmosphere, while "Blue Forest" is arguably the spiciest tune on the EP with its urgent percussion and more involved arrangements of lute action worked into a stomping 140 bpm rhythm.

Review: From the opening bars of opener "Blue Sleet", the influence of grime in Slackk's latest missive for the excellent Local Action is obvious - a precise matrix of thin eski synths, composed into interlocking parallelograms of luminous green, accompanied by salvos of rattling claps. "Fat City" takes a similar formula and inverts it, creating a particularly mournful instrumental with a sluggish beat, inspiring images of a rain soaked sink estate. "Almost Transparent" meanwhile, positively swims with melodic charm, and despite going heavy on the Eastern synth flutes and thin marimba stabs it has enough gravitational pull in the thick low end to keep the whole thing grounded. But the real gut punch is "90 Years", the only track that eschews any kind of melody for sheer dancefloor power - utilising industrial snares alongside some thick cylinders of laser bass that feel like they've been fired by an orbiting death ray. Fantastic stuff - and shows the trad house bass wannabes how it's done.