Hidden Treasure

By: DJ Vadim
Label: BBE
Written by: Matty O
Rating: 8/10

For Vadim Peare’s latest album curtain-raiser, Hidden Treasure goes skanking on a bouncy castle with the brass joviality of Lionrock’s Rude Boy Rock jumping around with props and pounds. The cake gets its cherries from soft soul sweetness via Sabira Jade, on a mission to start living life without a 9-5 getting in the way, and sharp-tongued yet enjoyable, non-threatening ragga toasts and announcements from Kwasi Asanate. In Vadim’s dialogue-scouring, crate-disappearing years on Ninja Tune, concocting a fruity punch like this would have been unimaginable, but year on year his funkiness has prominently risen to the top. His own re-rub, done in a funky house/8-bit soul style that’s lightly and lovingly put together for sweet-centred discos and garden get-togethers, rams the point home right on cue. 

More deep thinking, stammering dub is delivered on Soldier. Vocalists Big Red and 5Nizza tie up Euro relations, showing Vadim’s ever-present nose for mic recruitment in bearing French and Russian passports, and sip on a lil’ liquor for when the sky goes from being cloudless to that funny crimson colour as dusk draws in. Unhurriedly strummed and plucked, and with a refrain that bigs itself up without the connotations of hardships endured (as the world ‘solider’ often seems to), it marks that moment when the seat you’re occupying comfily straps you in for the evening’s duration.

Less of a winner is Saturday, a snooze-preparing clip-clop of sub-Detroit paleness/Dudley Perkins stumbling that has Chicago’s Pugs Atomz plugged into Autotune; he doesn’t do much more than show that this particular special effect still hasn’t had its chips yet. A bit of a wasteful addition to the mountain of T-Pain/K West emulations, on an otherwise enjoyable pointer towards Vadim’s forthcoming U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun LP