Starkey – Stars ft. Anneka [Planet Mu]

Street Bass don Starkey drops another single from his forthcoming album ‘Ear Drums and Black Holes’ on Planet Mu. After the smooth R&B meets grime episode of ‘Ok Luv’ featuring the vocals of Badness comes another vocal cut but in an entirely different tip. This time it features the vocal stylings of Anneka, who you may recall from Starkey’s ‘Build a Beat’ session on Radio One the other month. They team up to show a laid back side to Starkey’s music before Slugabed soon tears down the notion of peace and quite, while Starkey perpetuates things further by making a couple of large ones for the b-side.

‘Stars’ comes in two forms here the original is a warm, mellow and cosmic journey, while Slugabed takes that template and explodes in a freak experiment that leans it more towards the dance floor. Anneka shines on both, either sweetly floating over the original’s deep space soul or being chopped into melodic accents on Slugabed’s. The remix isn’t as bat-shit as some Sluga, he just adds a nice bit of robo-boogie and keeps the vibe of the original in-between outbursts of smeared bass noise and clattering beats.

The two b-sides see Starkey back in the mode we’re most use to: on ‘Starting Gates’ he unleashes some of his evil bots, who I presume control the basslines as they’re pretty deviant. But as always Starkey’s melodic nature nestles the hype in twisted musical progressions. It’s the wide screen cinematic experience of ‘Millennia’ that really takes the biscuit on the flip, Starkey shows his Imax ambition with massive builds full of sweeping synths before launching into a hyper-melodic bass drop and flurry of snappy R&B beats.

It’s another solid selection from Starkey that shows depth and versatility, which bodes damn well for his forthcoming album ‘Ear Drums and Black Holes’. Starkey does street bass in space.

http://www.myspace.com/starkey

http://www.myspace.com/annekamusic

http://www.myspace.com/slugabedmusic

http://www.planet-mu.com/

Originally written for Sonic Router.