Africans With Mainframes: KMT (2LP, Soul Jazz, May 2016)


One of the things I really like about the shonkier end of Chicago acid is the way it sounds like the producers are just barely managing to stop everything descending into chaos. It's really evocative of one of those moments on the dancefloor where everything is going really messy, in a good way. (Perhaps that's why Sleazy D's I've Lost Control is a touchstone of the genre for me.) That feeling is wonderfully present on cracking album from Jamal Moss (Hieroglyphic Being) and Noleian Reusse. The analogue sounds are buzzing and overdriven and just a bit wobbly, the sequencing is frantic, none of the transitions are at all smooth, and the result is two lovely slabs of thrilling, throbbing, banging vinyl. There's a moment about halfway through the first track where the whole thing just kind of lurches up a gear and a passage of beautiful clarity emerges: it slapped a big stupid grin onto my face, where it stayed for the next hour or so. Awesome stuff.

I bought this from Juno. They call it Techno.

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