I’m bored shitless of the vast majority of “vogueish” loopy house at the moment. The same old dull bass sounds, disco loops, filters and white noise ad infinitum. Great, you’ve cracked the formula, but you’re doing fuck all of any interest.
Sorry, I get a bit carried away sometimes. And then something like this occasionally lands in my inbox. Dirtybird has been one of the few labels to actually bring something different to house music in the last 5 years, and Justin Martin in particular has endeavoured to create fresh sounding, quirky tracks from the word go. I call it “surrealist house”; tracks that make you do double-takes, weird sounds coming in and out of the mix, and a general feeling of otherworldliness. This new release sees him team up with San Jose talent Ardalan – who sent him some beats that he lapped up – for one of the biggest bangers of the year.
Things start of reasonably unassumingly with some bumpy, chattering beats slowly taking fold, before the soaring vocal harmonies from The Avalanches’ Electricity (no doubt sampled from somewhere else) come gliding in for a rousing breakdown. There’s no indication as to what’s coming on the drop – and then BAM, in comes a masterfully cut-up sample from Snoop’s Neptunes-produced classic Drop It Like It’s Hot. The 808 drums kick hard and low while the infamous “Snooooooo-ooooop” vocal stutters manically like some kind of tribal flute. Utter carnage, and a masterclass in how to reinterpret a well-known sample in an original way. Don’t miss.
P.S. for proof of its utter prowess, we can give you Claude VonStroke dropping it around 5.30AM at We Love Space to a rowdy response, and our next door neighbour having an argument with us for the "dum dums" of the track being too loud. Good work boys.