Lots of folks jumped on Junior Boys' oddly jiggy beats on their debut EP, and the R&B reference was strangely apt -- the hollow syncopations on "Last Exit" sounded like Timbaland with a movers' blanket thrown over him, or dubstep (mashed up with Coloma) played quietly in a room walled with egg-carton foam. So the most surprising thing about the new EP is that the primary reference point is not Desitny or Jay-Z, not Dizzee's jerk, not even Def Jux, but Dif Juz. "Under the Sun," a seven-minute near-epic, cops the frayed and flanged guitar sound from the 4AD band's 1987 track for Lonely Is an Eyesore and then lays it over Chicken Lippy chug and a delirious yelp punctuating every downbeat. Despite the nominally electro-disco tendencies, the whole thing sounds utterly liquid, like water pooling over burnished rocks beneath thin ice (or maybe I just can't shake the image of Dif Juz' Andy Goldsworthian cover for Extractions?). "A Certain Association" dives even deeper into the same melting pool and dares your pulse to meet its beatless, mortal crawl.
Posted by philip at December 17, 2003 05:40 PM