KEY POINTS:
Bugz In The Attic: Back in the Doghouse
Herald rating: * * * *
Label: Shock Records
Smooth-sailing funk with an ear-catching twitch. Damn good.
Mr Scruff: Mr Scruff's Big Chill Classics
Herald rating: * * * *
Label: Big Chill Recordings
You'd need two sticks to point at all the tasty offerings among this lot.
Gilles Peterson & Patrick Forge: Present Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls
Herald rating: * * * *
Label: Ether Recordings
Jazzy floor-fillers from the leftfield.
Henrik Schwarz :DJ-Kicks
Herald rating: * * * *
Label: !K7 Records
A hither and thither DJ set blended for the wee small hours.
Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada
Herald rating: * * *
Label: Aire Sol Records
A touch Tex-Mex, a touch afro, a touch downbeat, and a heap of sun.
After spending the best part of 10 years tending to other people's knitting, it's more than about time remix kings Bugz in the Attic got their arse into gear and delivered a proper album of their stuff. This mega-touted West London amalgam of knob-twiddlers, musos and assorted hangers-on are pretty much the acknowledged bar-setters for all things broken beat, but there has been a lingering worry that all those musical schmarts stopped short of being able to conjure their own album.
But now ... tah dah! We have Back in the Doghouse, and as doghouses go, it's pretty flash. With a following breeze this album could do for broken beat what Roni Size's New Forms did for drum'n'bass. For new players, broken beat disguises your standard 4/4 electronic groove under a clatter of syncopated jazzy/ hip-hoppy/D'n'B-type beats.
Not that Bugz are out to be willfully perverse. Most of the more aurally-testing stutters have been set aside, which leaves stand-out funk-outs like Consequences sounding not too far from the classier 80s R'n'B moments of the like of the SOS Band - just a little fidgetier.
If that sounds like too much work, English DJ/producer Mr Scruff has come up with the collection for you. His Big Chill classics - think the Welsh festival not the soporific boomer flick - provides 28 tracks ranging from afrobeat to soul to jazz to funk coming under the heading of lazy vibrations.
But what else can you expect with titles such as Peaceful Morning, Serene, and Rick James' majestically saucy Getting It On (In the Sunshine). This is a double CD that takes class to earnest proportions, but as with olives, there may be only so much you can digest in a single sitting before you feel a hankering for something a little grittier.
Not that there's a lot more grit to be found in Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls, the most recent joblot from the prolific Gilles Peterson Inc. This time England's favourite tastemaker is compiling in cahoots with Patrick Forge, his competitive offsider from their influential arvo shows during the late 80s-early 90s that became the public face to his jazzy Talking Loud label.
Apparently, we really should have been here. Oh well, warm a pint and toss this double CD into the stereogram and imagine getting down to this eclectic array of grooves featuring some familiar names (Tribe Called Quest, Soul II Soul) and some unlikely names (Corky McClerkin, who rocks).
Putting more twisted bleep into your Christmas pud is new-DJ-on-the-block Henrik Schwarz, the guiding hand behind the latest in the ongoing DJ-Kicks series. Schwarz has cobbled together a laid-back collection which somehow joins the dots between the opening honkings of rhythmic jazzster Moondog, the total digitation of iO, the deep soul of the Luther Davis Group, and the rather marvellous D'Angelo.
He's even stuck beats under James Brown, which if it isn't illegal must be dishonouring a treaty somewhere. This album won't have you reaching for your glowsticks, but it suggests a night of flicking through his record collection would be a jolly good time.
Lastly we have Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada dishing up an Afro-Mex take on an old game: the soundtrack to a non-existent movie. El Nino y El Sol is billed as a soulful meeting of two faces of new world music, Antibalas' Martin Perna and Adrian Quesada from Grupo Fantasma, and bubbles along nicely without overstaying its welcome. Coolly downbeat and works best when the Atlantic-spanning beats meet Perna's flute.
