Shortstuff – Progression/Relapse/’A’ [Formant]

Badman Shorstuff is back again with his second solo 12” after the fantastic offering on Ramp. This platter for the Texan label Formant follows on from their last release by Hyetal perfectly and takes his broken tech infused sound into deeper territory, maybe deeper than we have ever seen him go before.

We open up with ‘Progression’ with its sweet and soulful hot butter popcorn bleeps and the broken grooves that Shortstuff does so well, it sounds like he’s taking the garage swing and twisting it into new shapes. The dubbed out echo’s smooth out his 8-bit synths and create some pent up dance floor energy.

The second track ‘Relapse’ almost has a boom-bap hip-hop feel to the beat, which is coupled with some big bass pressure that really adds tension to the piece. The synth lines here really remind me of early Planet Mu or Warp releases, they have that twisted echo drenched smeared sound. The melancholy bleeps of ‘A’ usher the 12” to a close in a melodic fashion. The rolling breaks and sweet bass tones make for a hypnotic listen.

This is some seriously nice work from Shortstuff it shows a deep and subtle side to his music, he’s shown he can spark off an energy rush with high-octane neon synths and pure dance floor tension but this takes us down a different road altogether, its one for the eyes down crew.

Originaly writen for Sonic Router.

http://www.myspace.com/djshortstuff

http://www.myspace.com/formantrecordings