Boxcutter – Arecibo Message [Planet Mu]

Northern Ireland’s Barry Lynn drops his third Boxcutter album Arecibo Message on Planet Mu and it’s a special one easily up there with his others. He somehow straggles genre boundaries seamlessly to make a sound that is unmistakably his own. Crashing together elements of 2-step, jungle, dubstep, electronica, and an organic sense of atmosphere Boxcutter makes for a great listen anywhere from the home to the dance floor.

Arecibo Message has some truly huge production values as we have come to expect from Barry Lynn and it picks up where Glyphic his previous effort left off but adding even more influences and vibes. You get everything from the ghostly 2-step tinged opener ‘Sidetrack’ to the summer time jungle of ‘Mya Rave’ and freaky skweee funk like on the cosmic ‘S p a c e b a s s’ all the way to super dubbed out atmospheric numbers like ‘Old School Astronomy’.

There are plenty of highlights here, like the Burial-esq future garage of ‘Sidetrack’ which really hits the sweet spot and the soulful vocal track ‘A Familiar Sound’ is pure bliss and sits in the middle of Arecibo Message perfectly, its slightly reminiscent of a really spacious version of Jamie Lidell’s funk or Martyn and dBridge’s ‘These Words’.

The acid dubstep style of ‘Sidereal Day’ is a cracker with its tweaked out acid bass, dubstep snare on the third and an off-kilter skweee funk vibe full of glitches and dub space. ‘Otherside Remix (Earth My Spaceship)’ has a similar feel but with a massive dub feel instead of skweee. Those all familuar dub samples like echo drenched horns and stabs are all present along with space age tweaks and bleeps. The off-kilter jungle of ‘Kap 28’ with infectious breaks and ravey high-pitched vocal snippets, much like ‘Mya Rave’ really kills it.

Arecibo Message is a light affair full of sunshine and funk but this is also off set by deeper moments of blessed out atmosphere and full tilt jungle moments. This one is essential for fans of all shades of dance music.