DJ Food - Magpies, Maps & Moons
Electronica
EP
7 November 2011
Ninja Tune
71%

Notes/Review:

 

The third in a trilogy of EPs released by DJ Food stretching back to 2009.

Here we see Food enlisting a few of the people he looks up to for a bit of assistance, notably 2000AD
comic artist Henry Flinty for the grisly cover art and growling Australian vocalist JG Thirwell (Coil/Foetus) on the opening Prey, which is a real juddering slab of dark electronica, propelled by crashing live percussion.

Likewise, Percussion Map sees DJ Food also steering away from his previous, more jazz-influenced work - with acid squiggles drilling into grinding bass funk rhythms and pulsating beats that later transform into incessant jungle drumming.

Discovery Workshop is more akin to Food's previous works, brighter, cleaner and riddled with breaks and vocals samples, the latter of which tend to irritate and distract after a while to be honest.

The eleven and a half-minute Magpie Music (feat. 2econd Class Citizen) is an amalgam of all the above, although not one epic track, rather 4 or 5 different tracks welded to each other. As messy and incoherent as it is innovative and imaginative, one struggles to find the link between tracks and therefore you have to wonder why this EP was not elongated into an 8 or 9 track album. That's not to say there isn't some compulsive passages of music here.

The EP closes with In Orbit Every Monday, a little reminiscent of Amon Tobin - with repetitive chord/sample structures co-joined to create a syrupy, elongated electronica workout.

Loads of ideas here and some very interesting, fast-paced rhythms are derived, verging on industrial funk at times, although it could have done with a few less vocal samples, which has become a very out-dated mode of fleshing out instrumental electronic music.

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