Kitchen sink dance music: experimental, grubby and not quite polished enough to be merely acceptable.
Kitchen sink dance music: experimental, grubby and not quite polished enough to be merely acceptable.
I heard a track off this LP on a compilation recently and fell in love with it: Shall He? Shanty was so daft and so unique that I thought that everything else the lad did would be similar. I’d better say that the quirky charm of Shall He? Shanty isn’t always found elsewhere on The Nutty Tree. This is a far more muscular release than I’d anticipated but it’s still great and I’m still going to rave on about it.
To me, this is a record that harks back to a time just after UF Orb and just before Big Beat; or something Ochre Records used to release back in the mid ‘90s: it is kitchen sink dance music: experimental, grubby and not quite polished enough to be merely acceptable. In fact there are moments when there’s a real vision discernable, and the sounds begin used don’t seem to do justice to the personality behind them. Cuckoo has echoes of that old big beat sound Midfield General used to produce, but the samples of water dripping make the track homespun enough. The Cross I’d Bear nods to Moondog, Eno and Cluster in equal measure (but mostly to glam-era Eno, as to my mind it’s got a feel of Faraway Beach). Half Term (808) has a feel of Coldcut about it, maybe it’s the abstract feel, and maybe it’s the spooky voice; who knows?
Elements of a more pastoral vibe are heard with Sculptress and Ee’m Yorn, and tracks like Pearl St Mess and Plainsong are daft and floaty enough to make you think back to a bleary eyed morning sometime about 1993.
It’s a brilliant and good fun record, so give it some time.