well well well.

just as i was beginning to think i’d never want to hear another album of loops/samples/beats along comes this instrumental concept album by sixtoo to totally spin my head around and readjust my playlist once more.

theer are no track names to break the experience down, just a 38 minute track broken into 13 parts.

the music is, as with sixtoos previous outing for ninja tune, a downtempo sombre affair, best played in the dark of night. probably alone.

the beats are big and fat with shades of melancholy, but the real character of the album is of course in the detail and distressed overdubs, of which there are plenty.

sometimes splinters of sonic weirdness keep the ears alert, sometimes there are drawn out melodies of beauty to calm the nerves, because jackals .. is one of those soundtracks to a movie yet to be made type of releases, and the reaction by the listener all depends if a drawn out mess of electronic experimentation is the listeners type of thing or not.

for me personally, the results are wonderful, truly wonderful.

whether my easily won dedication is because of the hard-n-heavy dubbed up drums that fill the grooves, the deeper than deep fuzzed up bassline in part 2, or the gorgeous acoustic guitar and piano in part 4, or, is the love due to the fact that there is a constant factor across the album that i can’t shift whenever i listen to it.

you see, an awful lot of this album has direct connections to the productions of ireallylovemusics fave producer, adrian sherwood. the majority of the source material that sixtoo crafts and manipulates is distorted, phased and processed all over the stereo headspace, making for an updated variant on the dubbed up experiments that adrian has been creating for years via his currently, and sadly, missing in action on-u sound system. 

of course, i am probably alone in this historical connection, as is often the case, so for those that have not heard on-u in all its messed up glory, this album will be welcomed as a brilliant slice of experimental instrumental hip hop grooves and dub production.

which is no bad thing, as jackals and vipers in envy of man is indeed brilliant.

 

more detail : ninja tune - - myspace